Global patterns of the leaf economics spectrum in wetlands.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32908150.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-18354-3 and PMC identifier 7481225.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes consistent correlations among a variety of leaf traits that reflect a gradient from conservative to acquisitive plant strategies. So far, whether the LES holds in wetland plants at a global scale has been unclear. Using data on 365 wetland species from 151 studies, we find that wetland plants in general show a shift within trait space along the same common slope as observed in non-wetland plants, with lower leaf mass per area, higher leaf nitrogen and phosphorus, faster photosynthetic rates, and shorter leaf life span compared to non-wetland plants. We conclude that wetland plants tend to cluster at the acquisitive end of the LES. The presented global quantifications of the LES in wetland plants enhance our understanding of wetland plant strategies in terms of resources acquisition and allocation, and provide a stepping-stone to developing trait-based approaches for wetland ecology.
Medical subject headings
- Photosynthesis
- Plant Leaves
- Plants
- Wetlands