ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Physiol.
Sec. Environmental Interactions
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphgy.2025.1652412
This article is part of the Research TopicInterplay of Abiotic and Biotic Stresses in Plant PhysiologyView all articles
Key eco-physiological leaf traits suggest a moderate to high level of thermo-tolerance of alpine plants in the western Himalaya
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR), Pālampur, India
- 2Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Ghaziabad, India
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Investigating thermal tolerance is vital in understanding how plant species would respond to future global temperature increase with greater rates in alpine areas especially in the Himalaya, a biodiversity hotspot. In this study, we investigated leaf thermal tolerance of 52 species from the Himalayan alpine region to assess: (1) response of alpine species to different temperatures (28˚C, 33˚C, 38˚C, 43˚C, 48˚C, 53˚C and 58˚C); (2) the dependence of thermal tolerance (T50) on various eco-physiological leaf traits; and, (3) variation in thermal tolerance among different growth forms. Thermal tolerance of various species was found to be in the range of 44.9˚C to 65.9˚C, highest in graminoids (53.8 ± 8.2˚C), followed by forbs (49.8 ± 2.2˚C) and rosettes (48.7 ± 2.4˚C). A significant positive correlation was observed between T50 and leaf traits such as, leaf mass per area and leaf dry matter content. We also determined thermal safety margins (TSM), which ranged between 20.3˚C (Malva neglecta) to 40.5˚C (Calamagrostis emodensis) for most of the species, with a few species under 20˚C, expect for Rosularia alpestris at 9.7˚C. Our results suggest that alpine species from western Himalaya, with elevated T50 and wide TSM, are currently within their thermal safety range, and are not as susceptible to temperature rise in the near future, compared to species from tropical and subtropical eco-regions, these regions are able to modulate their leaf temperature under their specified range of tolerance.
Keywords: thermal tolerance, Alpine species, leaf traits, Growth forms, western Himalaya
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 25 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hopak and Chawla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Amit Chawla, amitchawla21@gmail.com
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