Untangling the influence of phylogeny, soil and climate on leaf element concentrations in a biodiversity hotspot

1. Plant elemental properties are fundamentally important for physiology and biogeochemical cycling in ecosystems. No study has examined foliar elements and their interaction with soil and climate conditions at large geographic scales in Karst areas of China, a biodiversity hotspot in the world. Yet such information is important for understanding the functional diversity of nutrient strategies and the physiological adaptations of plants to climatic and edaphic heterogeneity. 2. We assessed the influence of phylogeny, soil type and the climate on leaf element concentrations in a clade of taxonomically diverse Karst plants from the subfamily Didymocarpoideae under an explicit phylogenetic framework. We measured leaf concentrations of seven elements and evaluated soil properties for 422 populations of 177 Didymocarpoideae species. The phylogenetic signals present in the leaf element concentrations and in soil and climatic variables were quantified at both the subfamily (Didymocarpoideae) a...