Ecological strategies begin at germination: Traits, plasticity and survival in the first 4 days of plant life

By J. Larson, B. Anacker, Sara Wanous, J. Funk. 2020

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

1. We commonly use trait variation to characterize plant function within and among species and understand how vegetation responds to the environment. Seedling emergence is an especially vulnerable window affecting population and community dynamics, yet traitbased frameworks often bypass this earliest stage of plant life. Here we assess whether traits vary in ecologically-meaningful ways when seedlings are just days old. How do shared evolutionary history and environmental conditions shape trait expression, and can traits explain which seedlings endure drought? 2. We measured seedling traits in the first four days of life for 16 annual plant species under two water treatments, exploring trait tradeoffs, species-level plasticity, and the ability of traits to predict duration of survival under drought. 3. Nearly half of traits showed the imprint of evolutionary history (i.e., significant phylogenetic signal), often reflecting differences between grasses and forbs, two groups separated by a deep evolutionary split. Water availability altered trait expression in most cases, though species-level plastic responses also reflected evolutionary history. 4. On average, new seedlings exhibited substantial trait variation structured as multiple tradeoffs like those found in mature plants. Some species invested in thick roots and A cc ep te d A rt ic le

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83b6944dd31cf0dd28a8f70c755fad58d2413bc9