Evidence of the ‘plant economics spectrum’ in a subarctic flora

• Main Authors: Grégoire T. Freschet, Johannes H. C. Cornelissen, Richard S. P. Van Logtestijn, Rien Aerts
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Subarctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.463.2540; http://www.cef-cfr.ca/uploads/Membres/Freschetetal2010.pdf

1. A fundamental trade-off among vascular plants between traits inferring rapid resource acquisi-tion and those leading to conservation of resources has now been accepted broadly, but is based on empirical data with a strong bias towards leaf traits. Here, we test whether interspecific variation in traits of different plant organs obeys this same trade-off and whether within-plant trade-offs are consistent between organs. 2. Thereto, we measured suites of the same chemical and structural traits from the main vegetative organs for a species set representing aquatic, riparian and terrestrial environments including the main vascular higher taxa and growth forms of a subarctic flora. The traits were chosen to have con-sistent relevance for plant defence and growth across organs and environments: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, lignin, drymatter content, pH. 3. Our analysis shows several new trait correlations across leaves, stems and roots and a striking pattern of whole-plant integrative resource economy, leading to tight correspondence between the local leaf economics spectrum and the root (r = 0.64), stem (r = 0.78) and whole-plant (r = 0.93) economics spectra. 4. Synthesis. Our findings strongly suggest that plant resource economics is consistent across species ’ organs in a subarctic flora. We provide thus the first evidence for a ‘plant economics spectrum ’ closely related to the local subarctic ‘leaf economics spectrum’. Extending that concept to other biomes is, however, necessary before any generalization might be made. In a world facing rapid vegetation change, these results nevertheless bear considerable prospects of predicting below-ground plant functions from the above-ground components alone. Key-words: dry matter content, growth form, nutrient content, phylogeny, plant trait, specific leaf area, terrestrial and aquatic environments, trade-off, vegetative organs