Global patterns of the leaf economics spectrum in wetlands

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes consistent correlations among
a variety of leaf traits that reflect a gradient from conservative to
acquisitive plant strategies. So far, whether the LES holds in wetland
plants at a global scale has been unclear. Using data on 365 wetland
species from 151 studies, we find that wetland plants in general show a
shift within trait space along the same common slope as observed in
non-wetland plants, with lower leaf mass per area, higher leaf nitrogen
and phosphorus, faster photosynthetic rates, and shorter leaf life span
compared to non-wetland plants. We conclude that wetland plants tend to
cluster at the acquisitive end of the LES. The presented global
quantifications of the LES in wetland plants enhance our understanding of
wetland plant strategies in terms of resources acquisition and allocation,
and provide a stepping-stone to developing trait-based approaches for
wetland ecology.