Aspect outweighs elevation in influencing plant functioning at high elevations of Himalaya

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985939%3A_____%2F25%3A00641308" target="_blank" >RIV/67985939:_____/25:00641308 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-025-01567-1" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-025-01567-1</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11258-025-01567-1" target="_blank" >10.1007/s11258-025-01567-1</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Aspect outweighs elevation in influencing plant functioning at high elevations of Himalaya

Original language description

Plant functional traits reflect ecological strategies and determine how species respond to environmental variation. While elevational gradients are commonly studied, the role of topographic aspect and its interaction with elevation remains underexplored. This study investigates how elevation and aspect shape key plant traits related to resource use and competition across 113 species in the high-elevation ecosystems of the western Himalaya. We examined trait covariation to identify dominant ecological strategies and tested the effects of elevation, aspect, and their interaction on individual traits and multivariate trait space. We also quantified the relative importance of each factor in explaining trait variation and partitioned the variation to distinguish the contributions of aspect and elevation factors versus species identity. Trait covariation revealed a dominant axis along the leaf economics spectrum (conservative-exploitative strategies), followed by a secondary axis associated with plant height as a competitive trait. Conservative strategies were favored at higher elevations and south aspects, reflecting adaptation to colder and drier climates. Trait variation along elevation was more pronounced on north aspect. Strong interaction effects between elevation and aspect highlight the context dependency of trait responses. Variation partitioning showed that most trait variation was shared with species identity, indicating that environmental filtering acts indirectly via species turnover. Our results demonstrate that in high-elevation Himalayan region, aspect outweighs elevation in shaping plant functional traits. The findings emphasize that climatic variation linked to aspect is a key but under-appreciated driver of trait diversity, and that trait environment relationships are mediated largely by species composition. This underscores the need to incorporate fine-scale topographic heterogeneity into models of plant responses to environmental change in mountainous ecosystems.

Czech name

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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

10618 - Ecology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Plant Ecology

ISSN

1385-0237

e-ISSN

1573-5052

Volume of the periodical

226

Issue of the periodical within the volume

11-12

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

13

Pages from-to

1287-1299

UT code for WoS article

001571184200001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-105016118414