Global patterns of the leaf economics spectrum in wetlands

Yingji Pan (), Ellen Cieraad, Jean Armstrong, William Armstrong, Beverley R. Clarkson, Timothy D. Colmer, Ole Pedersen, Eric J. W. Visser, Laurentius A. C. J. Voesenek and Peter M. van Bodegom
Additional contact information
Yingji Pan: Leiden University
Ellen Cieraad: Leiden University
Jean Armstrong: University of Hull
William Armstrong: University of Hull
Beverley R. Clarkson: Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research
Timothy D. Colmer: The University of Western Australia
Ole Pedersen: The University of Western Australia
Eric J. W. Visser: Radboud University
Laurentius A. C. J. Voesenek: Utrecht University
Peter M. van Bodegom: Leiden University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes consistent correlations among a variety of leaf traits that reflect a gradient from conservative to acquisitive plant strategies. So far, whether the LES holds in wetland plants at a global scale has been unclear. Using data on 365 wetland species from 151 studies, we find that wetland plants in general show a shift within trait space along the same common slope as observed in non-wetland plants, with lower leaf mass per area, higher leaf nitrogen and phosphorus, faster photosynthetic rates, and shorter leaf life span compared to non-wetland plants. We conclude that wetland plants tend to cluster at the acquisitive end of the LES. The presented global quantifications of the LES in wetland plants enhance our understanding of wetland plant strategies in terms of resources acquisition and allocation, and provide a stepping-stone to developing trait-based approaches for wetland ecology.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18354-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18354-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18354-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().