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Limited plastic responses in safety traits support greater hydraulic risk under drier conditions

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 1825–1836 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Understanding how plants adjust their hydraulic system to the environment is essential to predict how these organisms will respond to global change. Here we compiled a dataset and performed meta-analysis on 223 studies on plastic and evolutionary adjustments of hydraulic traits to air temperature, CO2 concentration, irradiance, soil nutrient and water availability. On average, species plastically increased embolism resistance and sapwood area per leaf area under drier conditions, with a decrease in stem-specific hydraulic conductivity and water potential at the turgor loss point, which are consistent with adaptive responses. However, the average increased embolism resistance was not sufficient to compensate the reduction in the minimum water potential, implying a lower safety margin from lethal hydraulic failure under drought. These results point towards a general critical increase in the risk of hydraulic failure in future drier environments. Plastic responses to increased soil nutrient content and irradiance did not always align with those to drought, highlighting the potential for changes in light and nutrient conditions to modify plant hydraulic responses to climate-change-driven droughts.

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Fig. 1: Magnitude of phenotypic adjustments of hydraulic traits and density plots for plasticity.
Fig. 2: Mean phenotypic adjustments (log-ratios) for environmental factors.
Fig. 3: Phenotypic adjustments in response to drought.
Fig. 4: Regressions between trait adjustments (log-ratios) of ΨPD, ΨMD, P50, ΠTLP, KS and Hv in response to environmental variation.
Fig. 5: Linear regressions between species trait means within water availability environments.

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Data availability

The dataset used in this Article with the metadata information is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14582442 (ref. 86).

Code availability

The code used is available via GitHub at https://github.com/ramirezval/Ramirez-Valiente-etal-2025.

Change history

  • 16 September 2025

    In the version of the article initially published, the second affiliation of Jordi Martínez-Vilalta was incorrect and has now been amended to affiliation 3 (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain) in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

M.M. acknowledges support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) via grant CGL2017-89149-C2-1-R (DRESS) and EU-2020 programme via grant 862221 (FORGENIUS). J.A.R.-V. was supported by a research contract financed by the AEI (Spanish Research Agency) and Ministry of Science through the Severo Ochoa Program for Centres of Excellence in R+D+I (CEX2018-000828-S) and competitive grants TED2021-129570B-I00 and PID2021-126399NB-I00. J.M.-V. acknowledges support from competitive grants CGL2017-89149-C2-1-R and PID2021-127452NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI (https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033), by grant 2021 SGR 00849 funded by AGAUR and by an ICREA Academia award.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    José A. Ramírez-Valiente, Rafael Poyatos, Eva Castells, Jordi Martínez-Vilalta & Maurizio Mencuccini

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Forestales (ICIFOR-CN INIA), CSIC, Madrid, Spain

    José A. Ramírez-Valiente

  3. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Rafael Poyatos, Eva Castells & Jordi Martínez-Vilalta

  4. ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture, School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Chris J. Blackman

  5. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Antoine Cabon

  6. Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, PIAF, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Hervé Cochard

  7. Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway

    Danielle Creek

  8. Universite Bordeaux, INRAE, BIOGECO, Pessac, France

    Sylvain Delzon

  9. Department of Biology, Geology, Physics and Inorganic Chemistry, Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC), Móstoles, Spain

    Raúl García-Valdés

  10. Global Change Research Institute (IICG-URJC), Móstoles, Spain

    Raúl García-Valdés

  11. CEFE, UnivMontpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Jean-Marc Limousin

  12. Departamento de Sistemas y Recursos Naturales, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Rosana López

  13. Ecologie des Forêts Méditerranéennes (URFM), INRAE, Avignon, France

    Nicolas Martin-StPaul

  14. INRAE, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, ISPA, Villenave d’Ornon, France

    Myriam Moreno

  15. Geography, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Lucy Rowland

  16. Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Louis S. Santiago

  17. Forest Botany, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Tharandt, Germany

    Bernhard Schuldt

  18. Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Seville, Spain

    José M. Torres-Ruiz

  19. Eco & Sols, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Aude Valade

  20. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Maurizio Mencuccini

Authors
  1. José A. Ramírez-Valiente
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  2. Rafael Poyatos
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  3. Chris J. Blackman
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  4. Antoine Cabon
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  5. Eva Castells
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  6. Hervé Cochard
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  7. Danielle Creek
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  8. Sylvain Delzon
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  9. Raúl García-Valdés
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  10. Jean-Marc Limousin
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  11. Rosana López
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  12. Nicolas Martin-StPaul
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  13. Myriam Moreno
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  14. Lucy Rowland
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  15. Louis S. Santiago
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  16. Bernhard Schuldt
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  17. José M. Torres-Ruiz
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  18. Aude Valade
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  19. Jordi Martínez-Vilalta
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  20. Maurizio Mencuccini
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Contributions

R.P., C.J.B., A.C., E.C., H.C., D.C., S.D., R.G.-V., J.-M.L., R.L., N.M.-S. My. Mo., L.S.S., B.S., J.M.T.-R., A.V., J.M.-V. and Ma. Me. conceptualized the idea and compiled the database. J.A.R.-V. and R.P. conducted the analyses. J.A.R.-V. wrote the first draft, and R.P., C.J.B., A.C., E.C., H.C., D.C., S.D., R.G.-V., J.-M.L., R.L., N.M.-S. My. Mo., L.R., L.S.S., B.S., J.M.T.-R., A.V., J.M.-V. and Ma. Me contributed with substantial revisions.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to José A. Ramírez-Valiente or Maurizio Mencuccini.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

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Ramírez-Valiente, J.A., Poyatos, R., Blackman, C.J. et al. Limited plastic responses in safety traits support greater hydraulic risk under drier conditions. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 1825–1836 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02830-4

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