Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• ZHU, SHI‐DAN
• SONG, JUAN‐JUAN
• LI, RONG‐HUA
• YE, QING

Titel

Plant hydraulics and photosynthesis of 34 woody species from different successional stages of subtropical forests

Ist Teil von

• Plant, cell and environment, 2013-04, Vol.36 (4), p.879-891

Ort / Verlag

Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Wiley

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• ABSTRACT It is important to understand the ecophysiological characters of plants when exploring mechanisms underlying species substitution in the process of plant succession. In the present study, we selected 34 woody species from different stages of secondary succession in subtropical forests of southern China, and measured their hydraulic conductivity, gas exchange rates, leaf nutrients and drought‐tolerance traits such as xylem resistance to cavitation, turgor loss point and carbon isotope ratio. Principal component analysis revealed that early‐, mid‐ and late‐successional species were significantly separated along axis 1, which was strongly associated with hydraulic‐photosynthetic coordination. In contrast to species distributed in late‐successional forest, early‐successional species had the highest hydraulic conductivity, net photosynthetic rates, photosynthetic nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiencies, but had the lowest photosynthetic water‐use efficiency. However, changes of the measured drought‐tolerance traits of the 34 species along the succession did not demonstrate a clear trend – no significant correlations between these traits and plant successional stages were found. Moreover, the trade‐off between hydraulic efficiency and safety was not identified. Taken together, our results suggested that hydraulic efficiency and photosynthetic function, rather than drought tolerance, play an important role in species distributions along plant succession in subtropical forests. It is important to understand the eco‐physiological characters of plants when exploring mechanisms underlying species substitution in the process of plant succession. In the present work, 34 woody species from different successional stages in subtropical forests in southern China were selected, to investigate plant traits such as hydraulic conductivity, gas exchange rates, leaf nutrient contents, xylem vulnerability to cavitation, turgor loss point, and carbon isotope ratio. Main findings of the manuscript were: i) both plant hydraulic conductance and photosynthetic capacity decreased significantly in the order of early to late successional stages; ii) changes in drought resistant traits measured for different successional species did not show a clear pattern. The results suggested that hydraulic‐photosynthetic coordination (rather than drought tolerance) might be the key factor affecting species distributions along plant succession in subtropical forests.