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Shifts in plant resource use strategies across climate and soil gradients in dryland steppe communities

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Abstract

Background and aims

Despite being Earth’s largest biome and a key contributor to global energy budgets, arid regions (or drylands) are critically understudied relative to mesic ecosystems. Here we clarify how dryland species vary in their functional traits across environmental gradients.

Methods

We measured nine traits reflecting resource use for 68 species inhabiting dryland steppe communities across northwestern China. We tested predictions from various theoretical frameworks including the leaf economics spectrum, leaf energy balance theory and least-cost optimality theory.

Results

Species on drier or sunnier sites had smaller leaves with higher LMA, higher leaf nitrogen concentration per area (Narea), and a greater drawdown of CO2 during photosynthesis (i.e., lower Ci:Ca) suggesting higher photosynthetic water use efficiency. Leaf nitrogen per mass and plant height (typically < 1.4 m for all species) did not vary with climate or with soil properties. Trait-trait relationships showed little patterning in relation to climate or soil. Traits of forbs were more strongly influenced by environmental properties than those of the shrubs, trees, or grasses sampled.

Conclusion

We investigated variation in plant traits that influence carbon economy, water use and competitive interactions, and found that in dry and low fertility environments, dryland steppe species exhibited a mixture of resource acquisitive (e.g. high Narea) and conservative leaf traits (e.g. high LMA). Our results demonstrate the utility of applying multiple theoretical frameworks to better understand variation in resource use strategies among co-occurring species.

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Data availability

Data will be archived in the TRY data repository upon acceptance.

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Funding

Research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32201525), the Gansu province’s Key Research and Development Plan (21YF5NA069), the Longyuan Talent Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team project, the Key Laboratory of Eco-functional Polymer Materials of the Ministry of Education (YDZX20216200001007), and the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We thank Jing Lu and Ting Qian for their dedicated assistance during fieldwork and experiments in the lab, and we thank Professor Changming Zhao for providing us the convenience of the use of several instruments, and Ning Dong for assisting us with the derivation of the climate data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China

    Baoli Fan, Pengfei Gao, Nana Ding, Dongxia Ai, Tingting Tian, Xiang Zhao & Kun Sun

  2. School of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Andrea C. Westerband & Ian J. Wright

  3. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW, 2751, Australia

    Andrea C. Westerband & Ian J. Wright

  4. ARC Centre for Plant Success in Nature & Agriculture, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, 2751, Australia

    Ian J. Wright

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Contributions

B.F. designed the study, collected the data and wrote the first draft. A.W. led the data analysis, revised the first draft and led the writing on subsequent revisions, with significant input from I.W. Data from the field study was also collected by P.G., N.D. D.A., T. T. and X.Z. K. S. provided input regarding the study design. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Baoli Fan.

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Fan, B., Westerband, A.C., Wright, I.J. et al. Shifts in plant resource use strategies across climate and soil gradients in dryland steppe communities. Plant Soil 497, 277–296 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06401-z

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