Plant traits mirror both evolutionary and environmental filtering process with universal trait-trait relationships across plant groups. However, plants also develop unique traits precisely to different habitats, inducing deviations of the trait coupling relations. In this study, we aimed to compare the differences in leaf traits and examine the generality and shifts of trait-trait relationships between alpine aquatic and terrestrial herbaceous plants on the Tibetan Plateau, to explore the precise adaptive strategies of aquatic and terrestrial plants for its habitats. We measured mass-based and area-based leaf N and P concentrations, N:P ratios and specific leaf area (SLA) of aquatic and terrestrial herbaceous plants. Standardized major axis analysis were applied to build the correlations for every trait pairs of each plant group, and then to compare the differences in the trait-trait correlations among different plant groups. Leaf Nmass and Pmass of two groups of aquatic plants (emergent and submerged plants) were higher, but N:P ratios were lower than those of two groups of terrestrial plants (sedges and grasses). Submerged plants had extremely high SLA, while grasses had the lowest SLA. Nmass positively correlated with Pmass in three out of four plant groups. The two terrestrial plant groups had positive Nmass-SLA relationships but these two traits coupled weakly in aquatic plants. Pmass showed positive relationships to SLA in three out of four plant groups. Significant shifts of trait-trait relationships between aquatic and terrestrial plants were observed. In general, aquatic plants, especially submerged plants, are characterized by higher SLA, greater leaf nutrientmass than terrestrial plants, tend to pursue fast-return investment strategies, and represent the acquisitive end of leaf economics spectrum. The deviations of trait-trait relationships between different plant groups reveal the precise adaptions of submerged plants to the unique aquatic habitats.
Salinization alters the elemental balance of wetlands and induces variations in plant survival strategies. Sulfur (S) plays vital roles in serving regulatory and catalytic functions in stress resistance of plants. Yet, how plant S and its relationships with nitrogen (N) vary across natural environmental gradients are not well documented. We collected 1,366 plant samples and 230 water and sediment samples from 230 wetlands in Tibetan Plateau and adjacent arid regions of western China, to analyze the effects of environmental variables on plant S accumulation and N‐S correlations. We found that plant S correlated with N in unimodal patterns. Salinity, rather than temperature or nutrient supply, promoted disproportionate accumulation of S but limited N uptake, inducing decoupling of N‐S correlation in plants. Toward high salinity, the faster increasing rates of total S than that of glutathione, the most abundant organic‐S compound in plant resistance, provided potential evidences explaining the decoupled plant N‐S correlation. A salinity of 3.9‰ was calculated to be a threshold at which substantial changes in plant N‐S correlation occurred. We designed a conceptual model to illustrate the mechanisms driving variations of N‐S correlation in plants and environments along salinity gradient. Furthermore, high salinity filtered out the salt‐sensitive species and reassembled the communities. In conclusion, increased salinity affected wetland plants by inducing S accumulation in plants and selecting salt‐tolerant species with high S concentrations at community level, providing evidences for plant adaptive mechanisms to salinity in arid regions.
The relationship between biodiversity and productivity (or biomass production) (BPR) has been a popular topic in macroecology and debated for decades. However, this relationship is poorly understood in macrophyte communities, and the mechanism of the BPR pattern of the aquatic macrophyte community is not clear. We investigated 78 aquatic macrophyte communities in a shallow mesotrophic freshwater lake in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China. We analyzed the relationship between biodiversity (species richness, diversity, and evenness indices) and community biomass, and the effects of water environments and interspecific interactions on biodiversity–biomass patterns. Unimodal patterns between community biomass and diversity indices instead of evenness indices are shown, and these indicate the importance of both the number and abundance of species when studying biodiversity–biomass patterns under mesotrophic conditions. These patterns were moderated by species identity biologically and water depth environmentally. However, water depth determined the distribution and growth of species with different life-forms as well as species identities through environmental filtering. These results demonstrate that water depth regulates the biodiversity–biomass pattern of the aquatic macrophyte community as a result of its effect on species identity and species distribution. Our study may provide useful information for conservation and restoration of macrophyte vegetation in shallow lakes through matching water depth and species or life-form combinations properly to reach high ecosystem functions and services.
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