Deilmann T J, Bernhardt-Römermann M, Hentschel J, Gros P, Römermann C
Institute of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution Friedrich Schiller University Jena Jena Germany.
Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function Jena Jena Germany.
Ecol Evol. 2025 Jul 31;15(8):e71839. doi: 10.1002/ece3.71839. eCollection 2025 Aug.
Bryophytes form an integral component in numerous ecosystems. They impact ecosystem processes by regulating water, carbon, and nutrient input into the soil, making them an ecologically significant but understudied group of plants. To understand ecosystem processes, functional traits offer a suitable tool as they reflect plant performance and strategies that respond to changes in the environment. Functional traits, however, have been hardly studied and are still poorly understood in bryophytes, limiting the understanding of functional responses to environmental variability and future change. Therefore, we here measured 10 functional traits related to water balance (e.g., leaves per cm, branching density, water uptake capacity) and productivity (e.g., shoot length, in situ fluorescence, specific shoot area) and related them to environmental variability for eight common forest floor bryophyte species in two temperate coniferous forests. We tested how well these traits respond to small-scale variability in water, light, and nutrient availability. Multivariate analyses showed a large variation in trait composition of the investigated species, mainly driven by growth form (pleurocarpous vs. acrocarpous), while the impact of forest type (Norway spruce vs. Scots pine) on trait composition seemed less important. Mixed effects models across all species revealed that traits were very sensitive to within-forest small-scale variability; for example, leaves per cm or in situ fluorescence were positively related to increasing plot-level characteristics such as leaf area index and throughfall, again with growth form-specific responses. We further found intraspecific trait variation for the most dominant bryophyte species, indicating considerable phenotypic plasticity. We conclude that moss trait variability is more linked to growth form than to forest type, and that both bryophyte communities and individual species are functionally sensitive to small-scale environmental variability. We therefore emphasize including bryophytes and growth form as a functional group more specifically in functional response studies.
苔藓植物是众多生态系统中不可或缺的组成部分。它们通过调节进入土壤的水分、碳和养分来影响生态系统过程，使其成为生态意义重大但研究不足的植物类群。为了理解生态系统过程，功能性状提供了一个合适的工具，因为它们反映了植物的表现以及对环境变化的应对策略。然而，苔藓植物的功能性状研究甚少，人们对其了解仍然不足，这限制了我们对其对环境变异性和未来变化的功能响应的理解。因此，我们在此测量了与水分平衡（如每厘米叶片数、分支密度、水分吸收能力）和生产力（如茎长、原位荧光、比茎面积）相关的10个功能性状，并将其与两种温带针叶林中8种常见的森林地面苔藓植物物种的环境变异性联系起来。我们测试了这些性状对水分、光照和养分有效性的小尺度变异性的响应程度。多变量分析表明，所研究物种的性状组成存在很大差异，主要受生长形式（侧蒴藓类与顶蒴藓类）驱动，而森林类型（挪威云杉与苏格兰松）对性状组成的影响似乎不那么重要。对所有物种的混合效应模型分析表明，性状对森林内的小尺度变异性非常敏感；例如，每厘米叶片数或原位荧光与叶面积指数和穿透雨等样地水平特征的增加呈正相关，且同样具有生长形式特异性响应。我们还发现了最优势苔藓植物物种的种内性状变异，表明其具有相当大的表型可塑性。我们得出结论，苔藓性状变异性与生长形式的联系比与森林类型的联系更为紧密，苔藓植物群落和单个物种在功能上对小尺度环境变异性都很敏感。因此，我们强调在功能响应研究中更具体地将苔藓植物及其生长形式作为一个功能组纳入其中。
