Leaf habit affects the distribution of drought sensitivity but not water transport efficiency in the tropics

German Vargas G; Norbert Kunert; William M Hammond; Z Carter Berry; Leland K Werden; Chris M Smith-Martin; Brett T Wolfe; Laura Toro; Ariadna Mondragón-Botero; Jesús N Pinto-Ledezma; Naomi B Schwartz; María Uriarte; Lawren Sack; Kristina J Anderson-Teixeira; Jennifer S Powers

doi:10.1111/ele.14128

Leaf habit affects the distribution of drought sensitivity but not water transport efficiency in the tropics

Ecol Lett. 2022 Dec;25(12):2637-2650. doi: 10.1111/ele.14128. Epub 2022 Oct 18.

Authors

German Vargas G^{1

2}, Norbert Kunert^{3

4

5}, William M Hammond⁶, Z Carter Berry⁷, Leland K Werden⁸, Chris M Smith-Martin⁹, Brett T Wolfe^{10

11}, Laura Toro¹, Ariadna Mondragón-Botero¹, Jesús N Pinto-Ledezma¹², Naomi B Schwartz¹³, María Uriarte⁹, Lawren Sack¹⁴, Kristina J Anderson-Teixeira^{3

4}, Jennifer S Powers¹²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
² School of Biological Sciences, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
³ Conservation Ecology Center, Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, Virginia, USA.
⁴ Forest Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama, Republic of Panama.
⁵ Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research, Institute of Botany, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁶ Agronomy Department, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
⁷ Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA.
⁸ Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁹ Department of Ecology Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.
¹⁰ School of Renewable Natural Resources, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.
¹¹ Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama, Republic of Panama.
¹² Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
¹³ Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Abstract

Considering the global intensification of aridity in tropical biomes due to climate change, we need to understand what shapes the distribution of drought sensitivity in tropical plants. We conducted a pantropical data synthesis representing 1117 species to test whether xylem-specific hydraulic conductivity (K_S ), water potential at leaf turgor loss (Ψ_TLP ) and water potential at 50% loss of K_S (Ψ_P50 ) varied along climate gradients. The Ψ_TLP and Ψ_P50 increased with climatic moisture only for evergreen species, but K_S did not. Species with high Ψ_TLP and Ψ_P50 values were associated with both dry and wet environments. However, drought-deciduous species showed high Ψ_TLP and Ψ_P50 values regardless of water availability, whereas evergreen species only in wet environments. All three traits showed a weak phylogenetic signal and a short half-life. These results suggest strong environmental controls on trait variance, which in turn is modulated by leaf habit along climatic moisture gradients in the tropics.

Keywords: aridity; pantropical; rainfall seasonality; turgor loss point; xylem hydraulic conductivity; xylem vulnerability to embolism.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Droughts*
Phylogeny
Plant Leaves* / physiology
Tropical Climate*
Xylem

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding