Extreme warming coordinately shifts root and leaf traits of alpine plants towards conservatism

Climate change-induced shifts in plant functional traits can profoundly affect the stability of plant communities and ecosystem functions. However, the way in which leaf and root traits coordinate in response to climate extremes remains poorly understood. Here we measured sixteen leaf and root traits of ten dominant plant species from a Tibetan alpine grassland to explore whether extreme warming leads to coupled/decoupled responses of root and leaf traits. We found that extreme warming increased the investment in defensive traits of plant leaves, but this came at the expense of plant growth. Specifically, warming increased the concentration of defensive compounds (tannin) in leaves by 44.4% but decreased leaf mass by 12.3%. More importantly, we found that the changes in leaf and root traits in response to extreme warming were coupled, resulting in both systems adopting more conservative strategies. For instance, extreme warming reduced leaf area and simultaneously increased root tissue ..., Species culture and laboratory-controlled extreme warming experiment
In August 2020, a survey was conducted in the alpine meadows at Haibei Station to assess biomass and identify dominant species based on relative biomass abundance. From May to August 2021, seeds from over 30 common species were collected for germination. Based on survey and pre-experiment results, 10 dominant plant species were selected for the experiment, including 2 types of grasses (Stipa aliena and Elymus nutans), 2 types of sedges (Carex alatauensis and Carex buchananii), 2 types of legumes (Tibetia himalaica and Oxytropis ochrocephala), and 4 types of forbs (Saussurea superba, Saussurea nigrescens, Gentiana straminea and Aster diplostephioides), which together accounted for 48.54% of the total biomass.
In our laboratory-controlled extreme warming experiment, spanning one growing season (from May to September), we employed temperature gradient plates (Model GRD-1; Grant Scientific Inc., Cambridgeshire, UK) to appl..., , # Dataset for \"Extreme warming coordinately shifts root and leaf traits of alpine plants towards conservatism\"

#### File: Data-Extreme\_warming\_coordinately\_shifts\_root\_and\_leaf\_traits\_of\_alpine\_plants\_towards\_conservatism.xlsx

**Description:** This dataset contains leaf and root traits values of 10 species we chose in our research.

##### Variables

* Species: The Latin names of 10 species
* Genus: Genus of 10 species
* Family: Family of 10 species
* Treatment: Control (16℃) or Extreme warming (+4=20℃)
* LC: Leaf carbon content (%)
* LN: Leaf nitrogen content (%)
* LA: Leaf area (cm2)
* LM: Leaf mass (g)
* SLA: Specific leaf area (cm2 g-1)
* Photo: Net photosynthetic rate (µmol m-2 s-1)
* SPAD: Relative value of chlorophyll content in leaf (%)
* Lignin: Lignin content (mg g-1)
* Tannin: Tannin content (mg kg-1)
* SRL: Specific root length (m g-1)
* SRA: Specific root area (cm2 g-1)
* RTD: Root tissue density (g cm3)
* RC: Root carbon content (%)
* RN: Root nitrogen content...,