Liu Shen-Si, Zhou Yong-Jiao, Guo Ke-Xin, Song Shen-Hao, Zhao Dafubaiyila, Ding Wen-Ming, Xiu Fang, Hao Guang-You
CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Silviculture, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua road, Shenhe District, Shenyang, 110016, China.
Daqinggou Ecological Research Station, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua road, Shenhe District, Shenyang, 110016, China.
Tree Physiol. 2025 Jun 2;45(6). doi: 10.1093/treephys/tpaf056.
Species distribution is strongly driven by local resource availability, while the coordination and trade-offs among plant functional traits can reveal their adaptive strategies and community assembly in environments of different resource availability. Plant economics and hydraulic traits play fundamental roles in plant environmental adaptation; however, how these key functional traits contribute to the formation of different adaptive strategies to shape community assembly in different environments remains largely unknown. Here, we assess the role of coordinated carbon economics and hydraulic strategies in shaping tree adaptation in environments with two distinct water regimes. We analyzed 20 leaf, stem and root functional traits related to plant economics and hydraulics for 10 tree species from a dry sandy land community and 10 tree species from a neighboring wet valley community. We found the economics spectrum that is coordinated with hydraulic traits, conveying a trade-off between stress tolerance associated with high tissue construction cost and resource acquisition efficiency. Trees in the dry sandy land community adopted a more conservative strategy, characterized by denser tissues, greater dry matter contents, lower carbon assimilation rates, higher leaf drought tolerance, narrower conduits and larger Huber values than trees from the valley. The functional coordination across organs was not detected in the sandy land forest, while the coupling of leaf economics and stem hydraulics occurred in the valley forest. Moreover, the trait network was looser in the sandy land forest compared with that in the valley forest. From sandy land to valley forests, the hub traits shifted from root diameter to stem vulnerability index and vessel diameter. Our results demonstrate that the coupled carbon and water-related functional traits have played important roles in shaping the adaptive strategies of forest communities with distinct water regimes.
物种分布受当地资源可利用性的强烈驱动，而植物功能性状之间的协调与权衡能够揭示它们在不同资源可利用性环境中的适应策略和群落组装。植物经济学和水力性状在植物环境适应中发挥着基础性作用；然而，这些关键功能性状如何促成不同的适应策略以塑造不同环境中的群落组装，在很大程度上仍不清楚。在此，我们评估了碳经济学和水力策略的协同作用在具有两种不同水分状况的环境中塑造树木适应性方面的作用。我们分析了来自干旱沙地群落的10个树种和邻近湿润山谷群落的10个树种的20个与植物经济学和水力相关的叶、茎和根功能性状。我们发现了与水力性状相协调的经济学谱，这表明在与高组织构建成本相关的胁迫耐受性和资源获取效率之间存在权衡。与山谷中的树木相比，干旱沙地群落中的树木采取了更为保守的策略，其特征是组织更致密、干物质含量更高、碳同化率更低、叶片耐旱性更强、导管更窄且胡伯值更大。在沙地森林中未检测到器官间的功能协调，而在山谷森林中叶片经济学和茎水力之间存在耦合。此外，与山谷森林相比，沙地森林中的性状网络更为松散。从沙地森林到山谷森林，枢纽性状从根直径转变为茎脆弱性指数和导管直径。我们的结果表明，与碳和水相关的耦合功能性状在塑造具有不同水分状况的森林群落的适应策略方面发挥了重要作用。
