Economic strategies of plant absorptive roots vary with root diameter 1

Economic strategies of plant absorptive roots vary with root diameter

Plant roots typically vary along a dominant ecological axis, the root economics spectrum, depicting a tradeoff between resource acquisition and conservation. For absorptive roots, which are mainly responsible for resource acquisition, we hypothesized that root economic strategies differ with increasing root diameter. To test this hypothesis, we used seven plant species (a fern, a conifer, and f...

Economic strategies for plant absorptive roots vary with root diameter 1

Complex trait relationships between leaves and absorptive roots: Coordination in tissue N concentration but divergence in morphology

Leaves and absorptive roots (i.e., first-order root) are above- and belowground plant organs related to resource acquisition; however, it is controversy over whether these two sets of functional traits vary in a coordinated manner. Here, we examined the relationships between analogous above- and belowground traits, including chemical (tissue C and N concentrations) and morphological traits (thi...

Mycorrhizal fungi and roots are complementary in foraging within nutrient patches.

The roots of the majority of tree species are associated with either arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) or ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi. The absorptive roots of tree species also vary widely in their diameter. The linkages between root thickness, mycorrhiza type and nutrient foraging are poorly understood. We conducted a large root ingrowth experiment in the field to investigate how absorptive roots of ...

Linking root traits to nutrient foraging in arbuscular mycorrhizal trees in a temperate forest.

The identification of plant functional traits that can be linked to ecosystem processes is of wide interest, especially for predicting vegetational responses to climate change. Root diameter of the finest absorptive roots may be one plant trait that has wide significance. Do species with relatively thick absorptive roots forage in nutrient-rich patches differently from species with relatively f...