Aboveground and belowground trait coordination across twelve boreal forest tree species. Spitzer, C. M., Jämtgård, S., Larsson, M. J., & Gundale, M. J. Scientific Reports, 15(1):680, January, 2025. Publisher: Nature Publishing Group![Aboveground and belowground trait coordination across twelve boreal forest tree species [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex The existence of trait coordination in roots and leaves has recently been debated, with studies reaching opposing conclusions. Here, we assessed trait coordination across twelve boreal tree species. We show that there is only partial evidence for above-belowground coordination for “fast-slow” economic traits across boreal tree species, i.e., while N content in leaves and roots were positively correlated, as well as dry matter content, root dry matter content and leaf N had no significant relationship. For resource acquisition traits (i.e. related to light capture and nutrient uptake) we did not find strong evidence for trait coordination, as specific root length and specific leaf area were not positively correlated. We further show that site only explained between 0 and 7% of the total trait variation, while within-site variation contributed substantially to the total trait variation for a large number of traits (1.6–96%), and more so for morphological root traits than leaf traits. This likely influences the strength of above-belowground trait coordination found across species in our study. Understanding sources of trait variation and above-belowground trait relationships can contribute to improving global and regional C cycling models. However, fine-scale environmental variability should be accounted for given its importance for driving trait variation.
@article{spitzer_aboveground_2025,
title = {Aboveground and belowground trait coordination across twelve boreal forest tree species},
volume = {15},
copyright = {2024 The Author(s)},
issn = {2045-2322},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-84162-0},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-84162-0},
abstract = {The existence of trait coordination in roots and leaves has recently been debated, with studies reaching opposing conclusions. Here, we assessed trait coordination across twelve boreal tree species. We show that there is only partial evidence for above-belowground coordination for “fast-slow” economic traits across boreal tree species, i.e., while N content in leaves and roots were positively correlated, as well as dry matter content, root dry matter content and leaf N had no significant relationship. For resource acquisition traits (i.e. related to light capture and nutrient uptake) we did not find strong evidence for trait coordination, as specific root length and specific leaf area were not positively correlated. We further show that site only explained between 0 and 7\% of the total trait variation, while within-site variation contributed substantially to the total trait variation for a large number of traits (1.6–96\%), and more so for morphological root traits than leaf traits. This likely influences the strength of above-belowground trait coordination found across species in our study. Understanding sources of trait variation and above-belowground trait relationships can contribute to improving global and regional C cycling models. However, fine-scale environmental variability should be accounted for given its importance for driving trait variation.},
language = {en},
number = {1},
urldate = {2025-01-10},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
author = {Spitzer, Clydecia M. and Jämtgård, Sandra and Larsson, Marcus J. and Gundale, Michael J.},
month = jan,
year = {2025},
note = {Publisher: Nature Publishing Group},
keywords = {Ecology, Plant sciences},
pages = {680},
}
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