Journal
NEW PHYTOLOGIST
Volume 229, Issue 3, Pages 1440-1452Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/nph.16940
Keywords
climatic seasonality; embolism vulnerability; macro-ecology; principal component analysis; vapour pressure deficitvapour pressure deficit; xylem hydraulic conductivity
Categories
Funding
- DIVERSITAS/Future Earth
- German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31825005, 31670411]
- Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) [GML2019ZD0408]
- Institution of South China Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences [ISEE2018YB01]
- Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou [201806010083]
- Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [2019339]
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The study found that climate seasonality and drought are key factors for selecting plants with high hydraulic safety and efficiency, acting as ecological filters for species with low efficiency and safety.
A classic theory proposes that plant xylem cannot be both highly efficient in water transport and resistant to embolism, and therefore a hydraulic efficiency-safety trade-off should exist. However, the trade-off is weak, and many species exhibit both low efficiency and low safety, falling outside of the expected trade-off space. It remains unclear under what climatic conditions these species could maintain competitive fitness. We compiled hydraulic efficiency and safety traits for 682 observations of 499 woody species from 178 sites world-wide and measured the position of each observation within the proposed trade-off space. For both angiosperms and gymnosperms, observations from sites with high climatic seasonality, especially precipitation seasonality, tended to have higher hydraulic safety and efficiency than observations from sites with low seasonality. Specifically, high vapour pressure deficit, high solar radiation, and low precipitation during the wet season were driving factors. Strong climatic seasonality and drought in both dry and wet seasons appear to be ecological filters that select for species with co-optimized safety and efficiency, whereas the opposite environmental conditions may allow the existence of plants with low efficiency and safety.
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