A plant economics spectrum of litter decomposability
1. Recent evidence indicates tight control of plant resource economics over interspecific trait variation amongst species, both within and across organs, referred to as ‘plant economics spec-trum ’ (PES). Whether and how these coordinated whole-plant economics strategies can influence the decomposit...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.474.2981 http://www.falw.vu.nl/en/Images/Freschet2012c_tcm24-291842.pdf |
| Summary: | 1. Recent evidence indicates tight control of plant resource economics over interspecific trait variation amongst species, both within and across organs, referred to as ‘plant economics spec-trum ’ (PES). Whether and how these coordinated whole-plant economics strategies can influence the decomposition system and thereby impact on ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycling are yet an open question. More specifically, it is yet unknown whether plant functional traits have con-sistent afterlife effects across different plant organs. 2. To answer those questions, we conducted a common-garden decomposition experiment bringing together leaves, fine stems, coarse stems, fine roots and reproductive parts from a wide range of subarctic plant types, clades and environments. We measured all plant parts for the same (green and litter) plant economics traits and identified a whole-plant axis of carbon and nutrient economics. 3. We demonstrated that our local ‘PES ’ has important afterlife effects on carbon turnover by driving coordinated decomposition rates of different organs across species. All organ decompos-abilities were consistently controlled by the same structure-related traits (lignin, C and dry mat-ter content) whilst nutrient-related traits (N, P, pH, phenols) had more variable influence, likely |
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