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.

叶片经济谱（leaf economics spectrum，LES）描述了多种叶片性状间的稳定关联，这类关联反映了植物策略从保守型到获取型的连续梯度。迄今为止，全球尺度下叶片经济谱是否适用于湿地植物仍不明确。本研究整合了来自151项研究的365种湿地植物的数据，结果发现：总体而言，湿地植物在性状空间中的分布趋势与非湿地植物具有相同的共同斜率，但相较于非湿地植物，其单位面积叶质量更低、叶氮与叶磷含量更高、光合速率更快且叶片寿命更短。本研究据此得出结论：湿地植物往往聚集在叶片经济谱的获取型一端。本文所呈现的湿地植物叶片经济谱全球量化分析，加深了我们对湿地植物资源获取与分配策略的认知，并为构建基于性状的湿地生态学研究方法提供了重要铺垫。