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Tree hydraulic traits are coordinated and strongly linked to climate‐of‐origin across a rainfall gradient
Author(s) -
Li Ximeng,
Blackman Chris J.,
Choat Brendan,
Duursma Remko A.,
Rymer Paul D.,
Medlyn Belinda E.,
Tissue David T.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
plant, cell and environment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.646
H-Index - 200
eISSN - 1365-3040
pISSN - 0140-7791
DOI - 10.1111/pce.13129
Subject(s) - drought tolerance , trait , xylem , ecology , biology , arid , climate change , range (aeronautics) , ecosystem , specific leaf area , environmental science , agronomy , botany , materials science , photosynthesis , computer science , composite material , programming language
Plant hydraulic traits capture the impacts of drought stress on plant function, yet vegetation models lack sufficient information regarding trait coordination and variation with climate‐of‐origin across species. Here, we investigated key hydraulic and carbon economy traits of 12 woody species in Australia from a broad climatic gradient, with the aim of identifying the coordination among these traits and the role of climate in shaping cross‐species trait variation. The influence of environmental variation was minimized by a common garden approach, allowing us to factor out the influence of environment on phenotypic variation across species. We found that hydraulic traits (leaf turgor loss point, stomatal sensitivity to drought [P gs ], xylem vulnerability to cavitation [P x ], and branch capacitance [C branch ]) were highly coordinated across species and strongly related to rainfall and aridity in the species native distributional range. In addition, trade‐offs between drought tolerance and plant growth rate were observed across species. Collectively, these results provide critical insight into the coordination among hydraulic traits in modulating drought adaptation and will significantly advance our ability to predict drought vulnerability in these dominant trees species.