In high-mountain habitats, summer frosts have negative consequences for plant fitness, therefore high-mountain plants have developed mechanisms of avoidance and tolerance to cope with freezing temperatures. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the prevalence of one freezing-resistance mechanism over another, focusing on thermal conditions without a consensus. We hypothesize that the prevalence of a freezing-resistance mechanism depends on the life-history strategy of the species, and is probably the consequence of a trade-off between growth/reproduction and the cost of the mechanism. Specifically, short-lived annual species should be freezing avoidant, whereas perennial long-lived species should be freezing tolerant. We used thermal analysis to determine the mechanism of freezing resistance of leaves and flowers for 10 annual and 14 perennial herb species from an alpine ecosystem in the Central Chilean Andes. We found that 70% of the annual species, their flowers and leaves were freezing avoidant, indicating that avoidance was their predominant freezing-resistance mechanism. In the case of perennial species, both mechanisms were almost equally represented in flowers and leaves. Overall, our results showed that a species freezing-resistance mechanism depends on its life-history strategy, and that leaves and flowers of single species exhibit the same freezing resistance mechanism, suggesting a common whole plant strategy. Further, freezing resistance strategies were not found to be mutually exclusive. In some cases, a specific combination of phenological, structural, and functional strategies may determine how freezing resistant vegetative and reproductive organs are to freezing during the growing season.

在高山山区的生境中，夏季霜冻会对植物的适应性产生负面影响，因此，高山植物已经开发出避免和耐受寒冷温度的机制。已经提出了各种假设来解释一种抗冻机制相对于另一种抗冻机制的普遍性，重点是在没有达成共识的情况下关注热条件。我们假设抗冻机制的流行取决于物种的生命历史策略，并且可能是生长/繁殖与机制成本之间权衡的结果。具体来说，短寿命的一年生物种应避免冷冻，而多年生的长寿命物种应能耐受冷冻。我们使用热分析来确定智利中部安第斯山脉高山生态系统中10种常年和14种多年生草本植物的叶和花的抗冻机制。我们发现70％的一年生物种，其花朵和叶子都避免冷冻，这表明避免是其主要的抗冻机制。就多年生物种而言，两种机制在花和叶中几乎相等地代表。总体而言，我们的结果表明，一个物种的抗冻机制取决于其生活史策略，并且单个物种的叶子和花朵具有相同的抗冻机制，这暗示了一种常见的全株策略。此外，没有发现抗冻策略是相互排斥的。在某些情况下，物候学，