Above- and belowground traits along a stress gradient: trade-off or not?

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14310%2F23%3A00132147" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14310/23:00132147 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10043" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10043</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/oik.10043" target="_blank" >10.1111/oik.10043</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Above- and belowground traits along a stress gradient: trade-off or not?

Original language description

The role of plant traits in shaping community assembly along environmental gradients is a topic of ongoing research. It is well accepted that plant traits of aboveground organs tend to be conservative in stressful conditions. However, there is limited understanding of how belowground traits respond. Plants may have similar strategies above and belowground, but an intriguing possibility is that there is a tradeoff between above and belowground traits of communities to both ensure efficient resource-use and limit niche overlap along the gradient. To test this, we asked whether the response of above and belowground traits of communities is coordinated or not along a stress gradient in Mediterranean sand dune communities. We analyzed 80 vegetation plots in central Italy to test for coordinated vs independent patterns in above vs belowground plant traits using community weighted mean and standardized effect size of functional richness. Our results show that plant communities close to the sea, which experience higher stress, were characterized by higher convergence towards aboveground resource conservation and conservative water-use strategies but belowground resource acquisition, consistent with a strong effect of habitat filtering and an above-belowground tradeoff favoring adaptation to harsh and dry conditions. At the opposite end of the gradient with lower stress, plants exhibited higher trait diversity for both above and belowground traits, but overall a dominance of aboveground fast resource acquisition and generally acquisitive water-use strategies, combined with conservative belowground strategies. This suggests that fast growth rate aboveground was compensated by more conservative fine-root strategies, but processes such as competition limited niche overlap overall. Our findings provide new insights into the relationship between functional traits and environmental gradients in plant communities, shedding light on the tradeoffs between the above and belowground dimensions.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10511 - Environmental sciences (social aspects to be 5.7)

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach<br>I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Oikos

ISSN

0030-1299

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

2023

Issue of the periodical within the volume

9

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

12

Pages from-to

„e010043“

UT code for WoS article

001004636000001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85161280267