Linking plant hydraulics and beta diversity in tropical forests
[1];
- Earth and Environmental Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545 USA
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FE UK; Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA 99352 USA
In tropical forests, studies of xylem traits governing water transport through plants, or ‘hydraulic architecture’ (Tyree et al., 1991), and changes in species composition across environmental gradients, or ‘beta diversity’ (Gentry, 1988; Ackerly & Cornwell, 2007), have progressedmostly in parallel until recently (Hao et al., 2008; Bartlett et al., 2016). In this issue of New Phytologist, Cosme et al. (pp. 000–5 000) present a timely contribution to the intersection of plant hydraulic architecture (HA) with trait-based community ecology. Building on previous biogeographical work that demonstrated shifts in species composition (beta diversity) across a gradient from valleys to plateaus in central Amazonia (Schietti et al., 2014), Cosme et al. explore how variation in HA might underpin this sorting, sampling pairs of congeneric species restrictedmostly to either plateau or valley habitats. Valley species had significantly lower wood density and higher hydraulically-weighted vessel diameter and vessel area. By contrast, trees with some of the largest hydraulically-weighted vessel diameters existed in tall, deciduous plateau species, while the leaf: sapwood area ratio decreased with height in valley but not plateau species. These intriguing results suggest that species differentiation in water transport traits mediate edaphic filtering along the valley-toplateau gradient, in contrast to previous work where wood mechanical support mediated valley-to-plateau environmental filtering (Fortunel et al., 2014).
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1430431
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-126171; 830403000
- Journal Information:
- New Phytologist, Vol. 215, Issue 1; ISSN 0028-646X
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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