Contrasting light demands determine the coordination of plants’ non-structural carbohydrates and economic strategy over the range of solar spectral composition

Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) are critical mediators of plant adaptation to fluctuating light environments. They are tightly coordinated with plant economic strategy, i.e., leaf economics spectrum (LES) and root economics spectrum (RES). However, the role of solar spectral composition in shaping the NSC pool of tree species and their relationships with LES and RES is poorly understood. We examined plant economic traits and NSC of two functional groups, light-demanding vs shade-tolerant tree seedlings, grown under five spectral-attenuation treatments: 1) control, transmitting 95% of solar radiation (CK); 2) attenuating ultraviolet (UV)-B radiation; 3) attenuating all UV radiation; 4) attenuating all UV radiation and blue light; 5) attenuating all UV, blue, and green light. Short-wavelength regions (UV) had strong effects on plant economic traits and the NSC dynamic, irrespective of functional groups. Shade-tolerant species exhibited higher trait plasticity than light-demanding speci..., Linear mixed effect models (LME) were used to explore the effects of spectral treatment and functional group, and their interaction on each functional trait (Table S3), with species and blocks as random factors, using the nlme package (Wang et al., 2020). Pair-wise comparisons were conducted to analyze the effects of specific spectral treatments with the multcomp package (Hothorn et al., 2008) when the effect was significant (P < 0.05). P-values were corrected with the Benjamini-Hochberg (BH) method (Benjamini and Hochberg, 1995). We used redundancy analysis (RDA) to assess the relationship between spectral treatments (using the actual irradiance measured under the filters) and leaf/root traits for the two studied functional groups (light-demanding and shade-tolerant), using the vegan package (Oksanen et al., 2015). Statistical significance was determined by the Monte Carlo permutation method and Bonferroni’s test (permutations = 999, P < 0.05). Prior to analysis, data were log-tr..., # Contrasting light demands determine the coordination of plants’ non-structural carbohydrates and economic strategy over the range of solar spectral composition

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.3bk3j9m0c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3bk3j9m0c)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data file contains one dataset: the concentrations of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC, including starch and soluble sugars) in roots and leaves, and the functional traits in leaves (four variables) and roots (six variables) of six tree species (three light-demanding and three shade-tolerant species) across five spectral treatments.

### Files and variables

#### File: data.xlsx

**Description:** The data includes the concentrations of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC, including starch and soluble sugars) in roots and leaves, along with their functional traits.

*Species*: Tree species used in this study, including three light-demanding (*Betula platyphylla*, *Quercus mongolica*, *Tilia amurensi...,