Traits, strategies, and niches of liana species in a tropical seasonal rainforest

Abstract

Plant functional traits and strategies hold the promise to explain species distribution, but few studies have linked multiple traits to multiple niche dimensions (i.e., light, water, and nutrients). Here, we analyzed for 29 liana species in a Chinese tropical seasonal rainforest how: (1) trait associations and trade-offs lead to different plant strategies; and (2) how these traits shape species’ niche dimensions. Eighteen functional traits related to light, water, and nutrient use were measured and species niche dimensions were quantified using species distribution in a 20-ha plot combined with data on canopy gaps, topographic water availability, and soil nutrients. We found a tissue toughness spectrum ranging from soft to hard tissues along which species also varied from acquisitive to conservative water use, and a resource acquisition spectrum ranging from low to high light capture and nutrient use. Intriguingly, each spectrum partly reflected the conservative–acquisitive paradigm, but at the same time, the tissue toughness and the resource acquisition spectrum were uncoupled. Resource niche dimensions were better predicted by individual traits than by multivariate plant strategies. This suggests that trait components that underlie multivariate strategy axes, rather than the plant strategies themselves determine species distributions. Different traits were important for different niche dimensions. In conclusion, plant functional traits and strategies can indeed explain species distributions, but not in a simple and straight forward way. Although the identification of global plant strategies has significantly advanced the field, this research shows that global, multivariate generalizations are difficult to translate to local conditions, as different components of these strategies are important under different local conditions.

Liana functional assembly along the hydrological gradient in Central Amazonia

“…2004) and exchangeable bases while the seasonal water de cit may favor denser wood and smaller stomata. Thus, contrary to global observations on plant strategies, the optimization of resource acquisition and conservation in liana species is not easily understood locally (see Liu et al 2021) until variations in functional design, optimized under a complex set of environmental conditions, are revealed. Thus, the biophysical constraint coupling between traits indicated by Reich (1997Reich ( , 2014) is more exible once the larger-scale environmental lters (e.g., climate) have optimized the local range of trait variation, allowing plant survival.…”

Environmental heterogeneity influences liana community differentiation across a Neotropical rainforest landscape

“…Individual liana performance is thought to be mainly affected by stand structural attributes such as canopy gaps and tree density (Schnitzer, 2018). However, an increasing number of studies supports the idea that topo‐edaphic variation also influence liana community structure both directly, by affecting liana establishment and survival, and indirectly by affecting trellis and light availability (Addo‐Fordjour et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2023, 2021).…”

Lianas shift towards larger sizes and more acquisitive trait values in an Asian tropical rainforest

“…For more details about the collection and measurements of these morphological and anatomy traits, see Liu et al. (2021b). An overview of all sampled liana species with sample size, mean values, and coefficient of variation can be found in Table S1.…”