Leaf nitrogen and phosphorus stoichiometry across 753 terrestrial plant species in China

Abstract

Summary• Leaf nitrogen and phosphorus stoichiometry of Chinese terrestrial plants was studied based on a national data set including 753 species across the country.• Geometric means were calculated for functional groups based on life form, phylogeny and photosynthetic pathway, as well as for all 753 species. The relationships between leaf N and P stoichiometric traits and latitude (and temperature) were analysed.• The geometric means of leaf N, P, and N : P ratio for the 753 species were 18.6 and 1.21 mg g − 1 and 14.4, respectively. With increasing latitude (decreasing mean annual temperature, MAT), leaf N and P increased, but the N : P ratio did not show significant changes.• Although patterns of leaf N, P and N : P ratios across the functional groups were generally consistent with those reported previously, the overall N : P ratio of China's flora was considerably higher than the global averages, probably caused by a greater shortage of soil P in China than elsewhere. The relationships between leaf N, P and N : P ratio and latitude (and MAT) also suggested the existence of broad biogeographical patterns of these leaf traits in Chinese flora.

N–P stoichiometry in soil and leaves of Pinus massoniana forest at different stand ages in the subtropical soil erosion area of China

“…Although the growth rate of the Masson pine in PF3 decreased, its large biomass and different sources of nitrogen and phosphorus could cause phosphorus to become a limiting factor for the Masson pine growth. The growth of the Masson pine was mostly limited by the availability of phosphorus in our study areas, which was concordant with the law of P deficiency in the low-latitude region (Hedin 2004;Han et al 2005;Zhang et al 2005).…”

Divergent scaling of respiration rates to nitrogen and phosphorus across four woody seedlings between different growing seasons

“…This observation is not surprising because the uptake, transport, and allocation mechanisms for P and N are very similar in plants (Feild & Brodribb, 2001; Jeschke, Kirkby, Peuke, Pate, & Hartung, 1997; Kilgore, Patel, Sharma, Maya, & Kielhorn, 2014; Lynch, 1995; Mimura, 1995; Niklas et al., 2005; Schachtman, Reid, & Ayling, 1998). However, our results also show that seedling P content scales isometrically with N content across the four species, whereas prior studies report that a ⅔ scaling exponent for P versus N across large plants (Han, Fang, Guo, & Zhang, 2005; Niklas, 2006; Niklas et al., 2005; Reich et al., 2010; Wright et al., 2004). This difference may be partly due to the gradual decrease in physiologically active biomass (and the N contained therein) as plants continue to grow in size (Ågren, 2008; Niklas & Enquist, 2002; Peng et al., 2010).…”

Invariant allometric scaling of nitrogen and phosphorus in leaves, stems, and fine roots of woody plants along an altitudinal gradient

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that N, P and the N:P of leaves noticeably change with temperature, precipitation and soil condition along latitudinal gradients (Han et al 2005;Reich and Oleksyn 2004). In contrast, Reich et al (2010) reported a consistent allometric scaling pattern of N L to P L with a uniform 2/3 log-log slope across dramatic biogeographical gradients.…”

“…It has been found that the scaling of N concentration as a function of P concentration in different plant organs can be well described by allometric relationship, in which the common log-log slope was significantly smaller than 1 (Ågren 2008;Elser et al 2010;Kerkhoff et al 2006;Reich et al 2010;Wright et al 2004). Many studies have demonstrated that the allometric relationship between leaf N (N L ) and leaf P (P L ) are similar at various scales, spanning from the local to global scale, with ranges of 0.67 to 0.72 for slopes (a) of the scaling functions (Garten 1976;Han et al 2005;Kerkhoff et al 2006;Reich et al 2010;Wright et al 2004). Furthermore, allometric relationship have also been detected in the roots and stems, for which the slopes (a) of the scaling functions are 0.76 (Yuan et al 2011) and 0.70 (Kerkhoff et al 2006), respectively.…”