Department of Plant Ecology, Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Biology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
Ecology. 2022 Jun;103(6):e3700. doi: 10.1002/ecy.3700. Epub 2022 May 11.
Identifying key traits that can serve as proxies for species drought resistance is crucial for predicting and mitigating the effects of climate change in diverse plant communities. Turgor loss point (π ) is a recently emerged trait that has been linked to species distributions across gradients of water availability. However, a direct relationship between π and species ability to survive drought has yet to be established for woody species. Using a manipulative field experiment to quantify species drought resistance (i.e., their survival response to drought), combined with measurements of π for 16 tree species, we show a negative relationship between π and seedling drought resistance. Using long-term forest plot data, we also show that π predicts seedling survival responses to a severe El Niño-related drought, although additional factors are clearly also important. Our study demonstrates that species with lower π exhibit higher survival under both experimental and natural drought. These results provide a missing cornerstone in the assessment of the traits underlying drought resistance in woody species and strengthen π as a proxy for evaluating which species will lose or win under projections of exacerbating drought regimes.
确定可以作为物种抗旱性替代指标的关键特征对于预测和减轻气候变化对不同植物群落的影响至关重要。膨压损失点（π）是一个最近出现的特征，它与物种在水分可利用性梯度上的分布有关。然而，对于木本物种来说，π与物种抗旱能力之间还没有建立直接的关系。本研究通过一项操纵性野外实验来量化物种的抗旱性（即它们对干旱的生存反应），同时测量了 16 个树种的π，结果表明π与幼苗抗旱性呈负相关。利用长期森林样地数据，我们还表明π可以预测幼苗对严重厄尔尼诺相关干旱的生存反应，但显然还有其他因素也很重要。我们的研究表明，π较低的物种在实验和自然干旱下的存活率更高。这些结果为评估木本物种抗旱性的特征提供了缺失的基石，并加强了π作为评估物种在加剧的干旱条件下的得失的替代指标。
