25th International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry IMOG 2011

P-249
Habitat adaptation by compositional changes of cuticular needle
waxes for the Norway Spruce (Observation Platform Eifel
National Parc)
Gina Kuippers 1 , Ulrich Mann 2 , Jan Schwarzbauer 1
1 RWTH Aachen University, Lehrstuhl für Geologie, Geochemie und Lagerstätten des Erdöls und der Kohle,
Aachen, Germany,
2 Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institut für Bio- und Geowissenschaften, Jülich, Germany,
(corresponding author: ginakuippers@web.de)
The organic-geochemical composition of cuticular
needle waxes of the Norway spruce from the Eifel
National Parc was investigated by semi-quantitative
GC/MS analyses. Needles of different ages (recent
vs. older generations) and from different altitude (364
m vs. 603 m) were compared to each other.
Aliquot samples were subjected to a combined
polarity/affinity gas chromatographic separation into
functionalized monoaromatics, fatty acids, fatty acid
methyl esters, n-alkanes as well as terpenoids.
Relative concentrations of the dominant compound
groups of the needle waxes were represented by
monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes and fatty acids (Fig.
1). According to the age of the cuticular waxes, a
decrease of sesquiterpenes besides an increase of
monoterpenes was observed. By far the most
important representatives of the monoterpenes were
β-phellandrene and camphene, whereas the group of
sesquiterpenes was dominated by δ- and γcadinenes.
The concentration of fatty acids increased
with sea level. Palmitic acid was particularly prevalent
in the cuticulae of the spruces at high sea level, while
dehydroabietic acid and arachidic acid features were
more prominent at the lower sea level.
Although n-alkanes did not represent a dominant
fraction of the spruce cuticulae, their most prominent
chain length increased with sea level (Fig. 2). In total,
the chain length of the carbon atoms ranged from n-
C21 to n-C33 alkanes. Whereas at the lower site the n-
C27 alkane predominates, at the higher location the n-
C29-alkane clearly represents the dominating chain
length.
Based on the amount of samples, present results
can be regarded as a random inspection only.
Nevertheless, especially the compositional
differences of the cuticular waxes were surprisingly
high related to a relative low sea level difference of
239 m between the two sample sets. On the other
side, these results may indicate the high potential of
the Norway spruce for habitat adaptations during
climate changes.
Acknowledgement
This study was conducted as part of project TERENO.
Fig. 1: Relative amounts of compound groups for site
Wüstebach (samples 1a-c, 603 m) and site
Wilderness Trail (samples 2a-b, 364 m).
Fig. 2: Relative contents of n-alkanes. Numbers
marking the peak of each distribution.
385