Environmental gradient; Functional trait; Heavy metals; Intraspecific variation; Niche breadth; Species turnover; Trait plasticity
Abstract :
[en] Questions: How do resource acquisition-related traits and stress tolerancerelated
traits shift along Cu and Co gradients? What are the relative contributions
of species turnover and intraspecific variation in driving these shifts?
Location: Fungurume V hill, Katanga province, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Methods: We measured five functional traits (vegetative height, leaf area,
specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf Cu and leaf Co concentration) related to
resource acquisition, competitive ability and metal tolerance strategy for 37 of
the most abundant species from 32 plots along natural Cu and Co gradients
(from 92 to 6737 mg kg
1 and 10 to 655 mg kg
1, respectively). Linear regression
was applied to analyse species-level and community-level changes in these
traits along the study gradients. Using variance decomposition, we evaluated the
relative contribution of intraspecific variation and species turnover to the total
community variation along the Cu gradient.
Results and Conclusions: At the community level, plant height and leaf area
decreased while SLA and leaf metal concentrations increased with increasing
soil metal concentration. At the species level, patterns were often idiosyncratic
and lacked generality. As a result, species turnover was the predominant factor
explaining community-level variation along the study gradients, which was particularly
clear for variation in leaf Cu concentration. This reflects the constitutive
ability of some species to exclude metal, while other species can tolerate high
metal concentrations in their leaves. The study emphasizes the importance of
evaluating the origin of phenotypic variations observed at the community level.
Disciplines :
Environmental sciences & ecology
Author, co-author :
Delhaye, Guillaume; Université Libre de Bruxelles - ULB > Laboratoire d’Ecologie Végétale et Biogéochimie
Violle, Cyrille; Université de Montpellier – Université Paul-Valéry > CEFE UMR 5175, CNRS
Seleck, Maxime ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département GxABT > Biodiversité et Paysage
Ilunga wa Ilunga, Edouard
Daubie, Isaline; Université Libre de Bruxelles - ULB > Laboratoire d’Ecologie Végétale et Biogéochimie
Mahy, Grégory ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département GxABT > Biodiversité et Paysage
Meerts, Pierre; Université Libre de Bruxelles - ULB > Laboratoire d’Ecologie Végétale et Biogéochimie
Language :
English
Title :
Community variation in plant traits along copper and cobalt gradients
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