Response of phytoliths in Phragmites australis to environmental factors in northeast China

• Phragmites australis instead of endemic species is tested to eliminate the differences and uncertainty between different species in NE China.
• This study makes a new way of addressing phytolith research into global climate change and environmental conservation and restoration.
• The relationship between P. australis phytolith and environmental factors is discussed from the point of the plant physiological activities.

Accuracy of paleovegetation reconstruction and understanding of phytolith formation would both be improved by further study of phytolith size in the Phragmites australis under different environmental conditions. Leaves of P. australis were collected from 11 sampling sites in northeast China with differences in temperature, precipitation and habitat. Principal component analysis of environmental factors (climatic and edaphic) indicated that the annual averages of temperature and precipitation were the main factors influencing phytolith size. Moreover, three-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) further showed that phytolith size differed significantly under conditions of different temperature or precipitation gradients, whereas habitat differences had little effect. The changes in phytolith size with temperature differed in the humid, semi-humid and semi-arid areas of northeast China. In the humid and semi-humid areas, moving from the temperate to the warm temperate zone, increasing temperature reduced phytolith size; whereas in the semi-arid area, phytolith became larger with increasing temperature. In the warm temperate and temperate zones, the changes of phytolith size with precipitation showed the same trend—moving from the semi-arid to semi-humid to humid areas, as precipitation increased, phytolith grew larger. Finally, ANOVA revealed that phytoliths were also sensitive to habitat. These findings demonstrated that the size of P. australis phytoliths was sensitive to environmental factors: for regional research, the annual averages of temperature and precipitation were the major factors influencing size, but in the same climate district, habitat differences seemed to also have a significant impact on phytolith size. Consequently, phytolith analysis has potential utility in the study of global climate change, palaeoenvironment reconstruction, and environmental conservation and restoration.