Taxonomic effect on plant base concentrations and stoichiometry at the tips of the phylogeny prevails over environmental effect along a large scale gradient

Despite the well-known importance of all elements to plant growth and nutrient fluxes in ecosystems, most studies to date have been restricted to the roles of foliar nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Much less is known about cycling and pools of base cations in ecosystems and the drivers of variation in cation concentrations among plant species, even though these cations are paramount for plant and ecosystem function. In particular, little is known about the contributions of taxonomic position and environmental variation on base cation concentrations. The extent to which concentrations of elements in plants are determined by phenotypic response to their availability in current environments versus by inherent species-specific uptake and processing adaptations, should be most directly evident at the tips of the phylogeny, where inherent variation among species should reflect relatively recent adaptation to environmental variation since their common ancestry. To test this hypothesis, we exp...