{"id":5822,"date":"2025-09-11T13:08:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/?p=5822"},"modified":"2025-09-11T13:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:23:31","slug":"traits-of-the-leaf-economics-spectrum-do-not-always-relate-to-species-biomass-proportions-in-grassland-communities-of-varying-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/2025\/09\/11\/traits-of-the-leaf-economics-spectrum-do-not-always-relate-to-species-biomass-proportions-in-grassland-communities-of-varying-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"New publication from Bachmann et al. in Ecology and Evolution: Traits of the leaf economics spectrum do not always relate to species biomass proportions in grassland communities of varying diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Traits of the \u201cleaf economics spectrum\u201d (LES) relate to a functional trade-off between slow and fast return on carbon investment, but it is not clear whether the globally observed trait-relationships also hold in local plant communities. We studied four leaf traits associated with the LES in 20 grassland species, which represented different strategies in spatial resource acquisition (from small to large) and temporal resource acquisition (from early to late). Species were grouped into three partly overlapping pools of eight species to create a field experiment with 138 communities of varying species richness (1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 species), which either varied in spatial resource acquisition, temporal resource acquisition or both. Leaf nitrogen concentrations (NLeaf<\/sub>) and greenness (LeafG) decreased with species richness, while leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and specific leaf area (SLA) did not. Species with different spatial resource acquisition varied in leaf traits, suggesting that large species had \u201cfast\u201d traits (low LDMC, high NLeaf<\/sub>, dark LeafG), while small species had \u201cslow\u201d traits (high LDMC, low NLeaf<\/sub>, light LeafG). The extent of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) was smallest in LDMC and largest for NLeaf<\/sub>, but for all leaf traits, a greater portion of trait variation among communities was explained by interspecific trait variation (i.e., different species compositions) than ITV. Species with \u201cfast\u201d traits generally contributed more to total biomass than those with \u201cslow\u201d traits, but species biomass proportions did not always match expectations for all traits related to the \u201cfast-slow\u201d trade-off. Multi-trait analyses showed that trait relationships expected from LES were not always present, and were modified by ITV and trade-offs. In summary, independent responses of individual LES traits to local plant diversity lead to context-dependent trait\u2013trait relationships, which cannot easily be interpreted as differences in growth strategies, and thus limiting the general applicability of LES in grassland communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Leaf dry matter content (LDMC) (a), specific leaf area (SLA) (b), leaf nitrogen concentration (NLeaf) (c), and leaf greenness (LeafG) (d) related to the spatial trait resource acquisition gradient. Different symbols indicate species assignment to the experimental species pools (see Table S1); darker colors represent spring and lighter colors summer. Relationships were analyzed in linear mixed-effects models (Table 1); regression lines indicate the slope and significance of the relationships (black\u2009=\u2009spring, gray\u2009=\u2009summer).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reference:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Bachmann, D., N. Buchmann, A. Ebeling, and C. Roscher. 2025. Traits of the leaf economics spectrum do not always relate to species biomass proportions in grassland communities of varying diversity. Ecology and Evolution 15:e72013. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/ece3.72013<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traits of the \u201cleaf economics spectrum\u201d (LES) relate to a functional trade-off between slow and fast return on carbon investment, but it is not clear whether the globally observed trait-relationships…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5822"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5829,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822\/revisions\/5829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}