Trade-offs in seedling survival, growth, and physiology among hardwood species of contrasting successional status along a light-availability gradient

By C. Kaelke, Eric L. Kruger, Peter B. Reich. 2001

104 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To better understand the regeneration ecology of northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) in mesic forests, we compared its seedling growth and physiology with those of two other hardwoods, differing in successional status, along a gradient in light availability ranging from forest understories (2.6% of full light) to small clearings (69% of full light). Oak's relative growth rate (RGR) closely resembled that of shade-tolerant sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), and the positive response of both to increasing light was modest, especially beyond a relative light availability of 15%. Intolerant trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) outgrew the others when relative light availability exceeded 5%, and its RGR increased more or less linearly with increasing light. However, there was a rank reversal of RGR in deep shade, where maple and oak had a higher RGR than aspen. This reversal was mirrored by seedling demography, as aspen survival was comparatively high in small clearings but negligible in deep shade. ...

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ddc09a87cc44f9beb63e32a6ef67c2074c212202

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In Global and Planetary Change

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

The Evolution of Plant Functional Variation: Traits, Spectra, and Strategies (2003, background): “…shade-tolerant species have lower leaf, stem, and root respiration rates than intolerants under comparable conditions both in experiments (Walters et al. 1993; Reich et al. 1998c; Walters and Reich 2000b; Valladares et al. 2000; Kaelke et al. 2001) and in natural settings (Lusk and Reich 2000).”
A trait-based approach to comparative functional plant ecology: concepts, methods and applications for agroecology. A review (2012, background): “This implies that relationships between seedling establishment and adult traits are not clearly established for most species found in temperate environments (but see Kaelke et al. 2001; Stancioiu and O’Hara 2006).”