Maladaptive response of an endemic California oak to climatic warming is previewed by interannual variation in growth and survival

Climate change poses a major threat to long-lived tree populations by shifting environmental conditions away from those to which species are adapted. One of the biggest concerns is that individuals that are adapted to current conditions will become maladapted to new conditions due to a reduction in fitness. If tree populations are already maladapted to their current environments, climate change may put them at even greater risk. Valley oak ( Quercus lobata ), a foundational California endemic tree species, has already lost much of its range to anthropogenic activities and has been shown to demonstrate patterns of climatic maladaptation. Given the rapid pace of climate change, predicting the future of a species requires quantifying the extent to which contemporary populations are adapted or maladapted to current climates. Here, we tested the extent and variability of maladaptation in valley oak using a ten-year, range-wide provenance study of 3,371 half-sib juvenile trees from 658 maternal lineages. We compared growth rates and multiplicative fitness functions (height * survival; MFF) across families sourced from sites with differing climates relative to the gardens, as well as against annual phenological records. We found evidence that valley oak trees are most adapted to temperatures beyond the coolest limit of the current species range. Within and across years, trees sourced from hotter localities had higher growth and fitness in the gardens, and the relationship was more pronounced in hotter years. Trees showed persistent maladaptation after ten years, suggesting that the role of phenotypic plasticity in immediate environmental response is superseded by underlying genotypes. Finally, trees with earlier leaf phenology (associated with warmer source climates) consistently showed higher growth rates, further demonstrating a maladaptive pattern. Our results suggest that short-term variation in fitness shows immediate short-term response to climate warming, “previewing” a concerning range of species-level responses to increasing temperature.