Linking leaf veins to growth and mortality rates: an example from a subtropical tree community

Yoshiko Iida; I-Fang Sun; Charles A Price; Chien-Teh Chen; Zueng-Sang Chen; Jyh-Min Chiang; Chun-Lin Huang; Nathan G Swenson

doi:10.1002/ece3.2311

Linking leaf veins to growth and mortality rates: an example from a subtropical tree community

Ecol Evol. 2016 Jul 29;6(17):6085-96. doi: 10.1002/ece3.2311. eCollection 2016 Sep.

Authors

Yoshiko Iida¹, I-Fang Sun², Charles A Price³, Chien-Teh Chen⁴, Zueng-Sang Chen⁵, Jyh-Min Chiang⁶, Chun-Lin Huang⁷, Nathan G Swenson⁸

Affiliations

¹ Kyushu Research Center Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute Kurokami 4-11-16 Chuo-ku Kumamoto 860-0862 Japan.
² Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies National Dong Hwa University Hualien 974 Taiwan.
³ School of Plant Biology The University of Western Australia Crawley Western Australia 6009 Australia.
⁴ Department of Agronomy National Chung Hsing University Taichung 402 Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Agricultural Chemistry National Taiwan University Taipei 10617 Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Life Science Tunghai University Taichung 407 Taiwan.
⁷ Laboratory of Molecular Phylogenetics Department of Biology National Museum of Natural Science Taichung 407 Taiwan.
⁸ Department of Biology University of Maryland College Park Maryland 21148.

Abstract

A fundamental goal in ecology is to link variation in species function to performance, but functional trait-performance investigations have had mixed success. This indicates that less commonly measured functional traits may more clearly elucidate trait-performance relationships. Despite the potential importance of leaf vein traits, which are expected to be related to resource delivery rates and photosynthetic capacity, there are few studies, which examine associations between these traits and demographic performance in communities. Here, we examined the associations between species traits including leaf venation traits and demographic rates (Relative Growth Rate, RGR and mortality) as well as the spatial distributions of traits along soil environment for 54 co-occurring species in a subtropical forest. Size-related changes in demographic rates were estimated using a hierarchical Bayesian approach. Next, Kendall's rank correlations were quantified between traits and estimated demographic rates at a given size and between traits and species-average soil environment. Species with denser venation, smaller areoles, less succulent, or thinner leaves showed higher RGR for a wide range of size classes. Species with leaves of denser veins, larger area, cheaper construction costs or thinner, or low-density wood were associated with high mortality rates only in small size classes. Lastly, contrary to our expectations, acquisitive traits were not related to resource-rich edaphic conditions. This study shows that leaf vein traits are weakly, but significantly related to tree demographic performance together with other species traits. Because leaf traits associated with an acquisitive strategy such as denser venation, less succulence, and thinner leaves showed higher growth rate, but similar leaf traits were not associated with mortality, different pathways may shape species growth and survival. This study suggests that we are still not measuring some of key traits related to resource-use strategies, which dictate the demography and distributions of species.

Keywords: Functional trait; leaf venation; maximum height; nutrient; plant development and life‐history traits; relative growth rate; species distribution; specific leaf area; wood density.