Jiang Dalong, Nie Tao, He Qiuyu, Yan Jing, Feng Erhui, Ye Qing
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Botany, and Key Laboratory of National Forestry and Grassland Administration on Plant Conservation and Utilization in Southern China, South China Botanical Garden Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou China.
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University Haikou China.
Ecol Evol. 2024 Nov 19;14(11):e70559. doi: 10.1002/ece3.70559. eCollection 2024 Nov.
Plant size is closely linked to its leaf trait characteristics, which are essential for determining its form and function. These relationships constitute a fundamental component of the global spectrum of plant diversity. Despite this, the size-trait relationships in coastal mangroves have often been overlooked, with a common assumption that they would mirror those found in terrestrial tropical trees. However, recent studies have begun to challenge this assumption, revealing unique adaptations and trait variations in mangroves that are influenced by their specific environmental conditions, such as salinity and nutrient availability. In this research, we investigated the leaf structural traits, plant height, and diameter at breast height or basal height (DBH) of 10 shrub and tree species. This study was carried out along an intertidal gradient within a mangrove forest located in Southeast China. We found that leaf traits differed significantly between shrubs and trees in their response to intertidal gradients, indicating that different species have evolved specific adaptations to thrive in their respective intertidal zones. This insight can help us decipher the selective pressures that have shaped trait evolution. Among all species, leaf carbon (C) economics (leaf dry mass content, leaf mass per area, and leaf density) decreased significantly with increasing plant height and DBH. For each growth form and intertidal zone, the relationships between plant size (height or DBH) and leaf C economics traits were consistent with those in the pooled dataset. Our study reveals that mangrove plants exhibit size-related adjustments in leaf C economic strategies, indicating that plant size potentially acts as a proxy for the "slow-fast" continuum of plant performance. This discovery is pivotal for advancing our understanding of plant functional ecology and for enhancing the precision of global C cycle models, which are highly responsive to perturbations in atmospheric CO and climate change.
植物大小与其叶片性状特征密切相关，这些特征对于确定其形态和功能至关重要。这些关系构成了全球植物多样性谱的一个基本组成部分。尽管如此，沿海红树林中的大小-性状关系常常被忽视，人们普遍认为它们会反映陆地热带树木中的关系。然而，最近的研究开始挑战这一假设，揭示了红树林中受其特定环境条件（如盐度和养分可用性）影响的独特适应性和性状变异。在这项研究中，我们调查了10种灌木和乔木的叶片结构性状、株高以及胸径或基径（DBH）。本研究是在中国东南部一片红树林内的潮间带梯度上进行的。我们发现，灌木和乔木对潮间带梯度的响应中，叶片性状存在显著差异，这表明不同物种已经进化出特定的适应性，以便在各自的潮间带茁壮成长。这一见解有助于我们解读塑造性状进化的选择压力。在所有物种中，叶片碳（C）经济指标（叶片干质量含量、单位面积叶片质量和叶片密度）随着株高和DBH的增加而显著降低。对于每种生长形式和潮间带，植物大小（高度或DBH）与叶片C经济性状之间的关系与汇总数据集中的关系一致。我们的研究表明，红树林植物在叶片C经济策略上表现出与大小相关的调整，这表明植物大小可能作为植物性能“慢-快”连续体的一个指标。这一发现对于推进我们对植物功能生态学的理解以及提高全球C循环模型的精度至关重要，因为全球C循环模型对大气CO和气候变化的扰动高度敏感。
