4.6 Article

Beyond leaf habit: generalities in plant function across 97 tropical dry forest tree species

Journal

NEW PHYTOLOGIST
Volume 232, Issue 1, Pages 148-161

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/nph.17584

Keywords

drought tolerance; functional ecology; leaf habit; plant hydraulics; turgor loss point

Categories

Funding

  1. United States Department of Energy [DESC0014363]
  2. Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota [6842]

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Leaf habit has been proposed to define the drought avoidance and plant economics in tropical trees, but it alone cannot explain the patterns of trait variation. Different strategies for adaptation exist within leaf habits.
Leaf habit has been hypothesized to define a linkage between the slow-fast plant economic spectrum and the drought resistance-avoidance trade-off in tropical forests ('slow-safe vs fast-risky'). However, variation in hydraulic traits as a function of leaf habit has rarely been explored for a large number of species. We sampled leaf and branch functional traits of 97 tropical dry forest tree species from four sites to investigate whether patterns of trait variation varied consistently in relation to leaf habit along the 'slow-safe vs fast-risky' trade-off. Leaf habit explained from 0% to 43.69% of individual trait variation. We found that evergreen and semi-deciduous species differed in their location along the multivariate trait ordination when compared to deciduous species. While deciduous species showed consistent trait values, evergreen species trait values varied as a function of the site. Last, trait values varied in relation to the proportion of deciduous species in the plant community. We found that leaf habit describes the strategies that define drought avoidance and plant economics in tropical trees. However, leaf habit alone does not explain patterns of trait variation, which suggests quantifying site-specific or species-specific uncertainty in trait variation as the way forward.

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