Aims Addressing plant responses to water stress is critical to understand the structure of plant communities in water-limited environments and to forecast their resilience to future changes in climate.In a semiarid ag...Aims Addressing plant responses to water stress is critical to understand the structure of plant communities in water-limited environments and to forecast their resilience to future changes in climate.In a semiarid agroforestry system in the Sahelian savannah of Leona(Senegal),we selected nine common tree species and explored their stress-resistance mechanisms.These species represent a variety of life forms and are of high regional socio-economic importance.We hypothesized that different species would show different suites of traits to cope with water stress and expected to identify functional groups differing in strategies to withstand water shortage.Methods Along a dry and a wet season,we monitored four traits reflecting above-and below-ground strategies of resource acquisition such as predawn leaf water potential(ψpd),specific leaf area(SLA),leaf thickness and leaf area index(LAI).We also measured two mor-phological traits:trunk diameter and tree height.LAI andψpd were measured six times during the dry and rainy seasons,and the other traits were measured once.Important Findings We identified two functional classes subdivided into two func-tional groups of each class.The first class included deciduous and semi-deciduous species that generally had large SLA,low leaf thickness and small-to-intermediate inter-seasonal varia-tions inψpd.The second class included evergreen species of two functional groups that differ in SLA,leaf thickness and the mag-nitude of inter-seasonal variations ofψpd throughout the year.The four functional groups identified in this study represent plant strategies differing in their response to changing environmental conditions.展开更多
基金This work was carried out within the FUNCITREE Project,an EU 7FP(contract KBBE-227265)It was also partly funded by the Spanish MICINN(grant CGL2014-59010-R)J.S.D.received a PhD fellowship from the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development(AECID).C.A.is grateful to the Spanish Government for her‘Ramón y Cajal’contract(RYC-2012-12277).
文摘Aims Addressing plant responses to water stress is critical to understand the structure of plant communities in water-limited environments and to forecast their resilience to future changes in climate.In a semiarid agroforestry system in the Sahelian savannah of Leona(Senegal),we selected nine common tree species and explored their stress-resistance mechanisms.These species represent a variety of life forms and are of high regional socio-economic importance.We hypothesized that different species would show different suites of traits to cope with water stress and expected to identify functional groups differing in strategies to withstand water shortage.Methods Along a dry and a wet season,we monitored four traits reflecting above-and below-ground strategies of resource acquisition such as predawn leaf water potential(ψpd),specific leaf area(SLA),leaf thickness and leaf area index(LAI).We also measured two mor-phological traits:trunk diameter and tree height.LAI andψpd were measured six times during the dry and rainy seasons,and the other traits were measured once.Important Findings We identified two functional classes subdivided into two func-tional groups of each class.The first class included deciduous and semi-deciduous species that generally had large SLA,low leaf thickness and small-to-intermediate inter-seasonal varia-tions inψpd.The second class included evergreen species of two functional groups that differ in SLA,leaf thickness and the mag-nitude of inter-seasonal variations ofψpd throughout the year.The four functional groups identified in this study represent plant strategies differing in their response to changing environmental conditions.
