Protea repens whole transcriptome count data for control and drought treatment for 8 populations, climatic data for the 8 populations and phenotypic data collected, and data used for linear mixed models for climate gene expression/trait correlation testing

Long term environmental variation often drives local adaptation and leads to trait differentiation across populations. Additionally, when traits change in an environment-dependent way through phenotypic plasticity, the genetic variation underlying plasticity will also be under selection. These processes could create a landscape of differentiation across populations in traits and their plasticity. Here, we performed a dry-down experiment under controlled conditions to measure responses in seedlings of a shrub species from the Cape Floristic Region, the common sugarbush (Protea repens). We measured morphological and physiological traits, and sequenced whole transcriptomes of leaf tissues from 8 populations that represent both the climatic and the geographic distribution of this species. We found that there is substantial variation in how populations respond to drought, but we also observed common patterns such as reduced leaf size and leaf thickness, and upregulation of stress- and down-r...