Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Oecologia. 2010 Jul;163(3):591-9. doi: 10.1007/s00442-010-1579-3. Epub 2010 Feb 27.
Lianas are an important component of tropical forests and often abundant in open habitats, such as tree-fall gaps, forest edges, and disturbed forests. The abundance of lianas in tropical forests has been increasing as a result of global environmental change and increasing forest fragmentation. In order to understand this phenomenon in terms of leaf functional traits and to evaluate their competitive potential, we conducted a cost-benefit analysis of leaves from 18 liana species and 19 tree species in a tropical seasonal rain forest. The results revealed that lianas were scattered in a group distinct from trees along the first axis of a principal component analysis using 15 leaf ecophysiological traits, being located at the quick-return end of the leaf economics spectrum, with higher specific leaf area and photosynthetic rates (A), higher photosynthetic nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) use efficiencies, a lower leaf construction cost per unit leaf area (CC) and cost-benefit ratio (CC/A), and a shorter leaf life span (LLS). Trees showed the opposite trends. The results indicate that lianas can grow faster and capture resources more efficiently than trees in disturbed, open habitats. The positive relationship between LLS and CC/A revealed a trade-off between leaf construction cost and benefit over time. The 37 species analyzed had a mean foliar N/P ratio of 20, indicating that the forest was characterized by a P deficit. With an increasing atmospheric CO(2) concentration, the higher nutrient use efficiency could benefit lianas more than trees in terms of productivity, possibly also contributing to the increasing abundance of lianas in nutrient-limited tropical forests.
藤本植物是热带森林的重要组成部分，通常在开阔生境中丰富，如树木倒伏的空隙、森林边缘和受干扰的森林。由于全球环境变化和森林破碎化的加剧，热带森林中藤本植物的丰度有所增加。为了从叶片功能特征的角度理解这一现象，并评估它们的竞争潜力，我们对热带季节性雨林中 18 种藤本植物和 19 种木本植物的叶片进行了成本效益分析。结果表明，15 种叶片生理生态特征的主成分分析结果显示，藤本植物沿第一轴呈分散状态，与树木形成明显的集群，位于叶片经济谱的快速回报端，具有较高的比叶面积和光合速率（A）、较高的光合氮（N）和磷（P）利用效率、单位叶面积叶片构建成本（CC）和成本效益比（CC/A）较低，叶片寿命（LLS）较短。树木则表现出相反的趋势。结果表明，在受干扰的开阔生境中，藤本植物比树木生长更快，能更有效地获取资源。LLS 与 CC/A 之间的正相关关系揭示了叶片构建成本和效益随时间的权衡。分析的 37 个物种的叶片 N/P 比平均为 20，表明森林以磷亏缺为特征。随着大气 CO(2)浓度的增加，较高的养分利用效率可能使藤本植物在生产力方面比树木受益更多，这也可能导致在养分有限的热带森林中，藤本植物的丰度增加。
