Weak coordination between leaf drought tolerance and proxy traits in herbaceous plants

Increased drought is predicted to have a major impact on plant performance under environmental change. Yet leaf hydraulic traits directly related to drought tolerance, such as leaf turgor loss point (πtlp), are underrepresented in trait-based studies and have been largely overlooked within the main frameworks evaluating trait–trait coordination and trade-offs: the leaf economics spectrum and the global spectrum of plant form and function.
Using 122 herbaceous species from the Central European temperate grasslands, we investigated (1) the coordination between πtlp and traits often used as proxies for drought tolerance: specific leaf area (SLA), leaf area (LA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), leaf thickness (LT), plant height and intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE); (2) whether the strength of the trait–trait relationships differed across plant functional types (PFTs: graminoids and forbs) and depended on species phylogeny; (3) whether single or multiple traits, combined with eithe...