Environmental impact on overall leaf morphology between Acer rubrum individuals

Abstract

Environmental variation can have a significant impact on phenotypic differences amongindividuals. The red maple is the most widely spread tree in eastern North America, and cansurvive in a large variety of microenvironments. Additionally, the leaves of the red maple are themost variable in shape of any maple. The objective of this study was to determine if the habitatvariability of the red maple and the morphological variation in red maples leaves are linked. Wecollected soil, light, and size data from ten red maple trees, all located on UMBS property, andpicked five leaves from each tree for morphometric analysis. Both our statistical andmorphometric analyses were performed in R. The results found no statistically significantrelationships between any of the environmental variables and leaf morphology, implying leafshape in red maples is not determined by environmental factors. Replications of this study withlarger sample sizes and more environmental factors should be performed, and tree geneticsshould be analyzed to determine the heritability of leaf morphology.