Climate, Life Form and Family Jointly Control Variation of Leaf Traits

Variation in leaf traits may represent differences in physiological processes and environmental adaptative strategies. Using multivariate analyses, we investigated 13 leaf traits to quantify the trade-off in these traits and the trait-climate/biome relationships based on the China Plant Trait Databa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Plants (Basel) 2019-08, Vol.8 (8), p.286
Main Authors: Zhang, Hao, Zeng, Zhaoxia, Zou, Zhigang, Zeng, Fuping
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
biome
climate
Climate change
Climate effects
Flora
Global climate
Grasslands
Hypotheses
Isotope ratios
Leaf area
leaf trait
Leaves
Morphology
Multivariate analysis
Partitioning
Physiology
Plants
Plants (botany)
resource use
Stable isotopes
trade-off
Tropical environments
Variation
Woodlands
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Variation in leaf traits may represent differences in physiological processes and environmental adaptative strategies. Using multivariate analyses, we investigated 13 leaf traits to quantify the trade-off in these traits and the trait-climate/biome relationships based on the China Plant Trait Database, which contains morphometric and physiological character information on 1215 species for 122 sites, ranging from the north to the tropics, and from deserts and grasslands to woodlands and forests. Leaf traits across the dataset of Chinese plants showed different spatial patterns along longitudinal and latitudinal gradients and high variation. There were significant positive or negative correlations among traits; however, with the exception of the leaf C: C stable isotope ratio, there were no significant correlations between leaf area and other traits. Climate, life form, and family jointly accounted for 68.4% to 95.7% of trait variance. Amongst these forms of variation partitioning, the most important partitioning feature was the family independence of climate and life form (35.6% to 57.2%), while the joint effect of family and climate was 4.5% to 26.2%, and the joint effect of family and life form was 2.4% to 21.6%. The findings of this study will enhance our understanding of the variation in leaf traits in Chinese flora and the environmental adaptative strategies of plants against a background of global climate change, and also may enrich and improve the leaf economics spectrum of China.
ISSN:2223-7747
2223-7747
DOI:10.3390/plants8080286