Plant Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Environmental Factors

Plants are exposed to heterogeneity in the environment where new stress factors (i.e., climate change, land use change, and invasiveness) are introduced, and where inter- and intraspecies differences may reflect resource limitation and/or environmental stress factors. Phenotypic plasticity is considered one of the major means by which plants can cope with environmental factor variability. Nevertheless, the extent to which phenotypic plasticity may facilitate survival under environmental condition changes still remains largely unknown because results are sometimes controversial. Thus, it is important to identify plant functional traits in which plasticity may play a determinant role in plant response to global…