The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes a major axis of plant functional trait variation worldwide, defining suites of leaf traits aligned with resource-acquisitive to resource-conservative ecological strategies. The LES has been interpreted to arise from leaf-level trade-offs among ecophysiological traits common to all plants. However, it has been suggested that the defining leaflevel trad...

The hydraulic resistance of the leaf (R1) is a major bottleneck in the whole plant water transport pathway and may thus be linked with the enormous variation in leaf structure and function among tropical rain forest trees. A previous study found that R1 varied by an order of magnitude across 10 tree species of Panamanian tropical lowland rain forest. Here, correlations were tested between R1 an...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY It is generally thought that herbivore pressure is higher at lower elevations where climate is warmer and less seasonal, and that this has led to higher levels of plant defense investment at low elevations. However, the generality of this expectation has been called into question by recent studies. METHODS We tested for altitudinal gradients in insect leaf damage, plant d...

The goal of the study was to explore hydraulic traits in a 4-year-old loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation to better understand plasticity of this species to resource availability. The influence of a factorial combination of irrigation (130 mm year 1 versus 494 mm year ) and fertilization (0 kg N ha 1 year 1 versus 80 kg N ha 1 year ) on stand-level transpiration, canopy stomatal conductan...

Alpine ecosystems are seriously threatened by climate change. One of the key mechanisms by which plants can adapt to changing environmental conditions is through evolutionary change. However, we still know little about the evolutionary potential in wild populations of long-lived alpine plants. Here, we investigated heritabilities of phenological traits, leaf size, and performance traits in natu...

Most terrestrial ecosystems are nitrogen (N)-limited. The elucidation of the multivariate relationships among environmental drivers, leaf morphological traits, and foliar N of dominant species which are critical to the functioning of forests remains a critical challenge for ecologists. We sampled leaves of Quercus wutaishanica across a broad natural gradient in the Loess Plateau, China, and emp...

Elevational gradients are increasingly recognized as a valuable tool for understanding how community and ecosystem properties respond to climatic factors, but little is known about how plant traits and their effects on ecosystem processes respond to elevation. We studied the response of plant leaf and litter traits, and litter decomposability across a gradient of elevation, and thus temperature...

Plant functional traits are thought to drive variation in primary productivity. However, there is a lack of work examining how dominant species identity affects trait-productivity relationships. The productivity of 12 pasture mixtures was determined in a 3-year field experiment. The mixtures were based on either the winter-active ryegrass (Lolium perenne) or winter-dormant tall fescue (Festuca ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Success of invasive plant species is thought to be linked with their higher leaf carbon fixation strategy, enabling them to capture and utilize resources better than native species, and thus pre-empt and maintain space. However, these traits are not well-defined for invasive woody vines. METHODS In a glass house setting, experiments were conducted to examine how leaf carbo...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Resprouting and seed recruitment are important ways in which plants respond to fire. However, the investments a plant makes into ensuring the success of post-fire resprouting or seedling recruitment can result in trade-offs that are manifested in a range of co-occurring morphological, life history and physiological traits. Relationships between fire-response strategies and o...