Root foraging performance and life-history traits

Plants use their roots to forage for nutrients in heterogeneous soil environments, but different plant species vastly differ in the intensity of foraging they perform. This diversity suggests the existence of constraints on foraging at the species level. We therefore examined the relationships between the intensity of root foraging and plant body traits across species in order to estimate the degree of coordination between plant body traits and root foraging as a form of plant behavior. We cultivated 37 perennial herbaceous Central European species from open terrestrial habitats in pots with three different spatial gradients of nutrient availability (steep, shallow and no gradient). We assessed the intensity of foraging as differences in root placement inside pots with and without a spatial gradient of resource supply. For the same set of species, we retrieved data about body traits from available databases: maximum height at maturity, mean area of leaf, specific leaf area, shoot lifes...植物通过根系在异质性土壤环境中觅取养分，但不同植物物种的觅食强度差异显著。这种多样性暗示，物种层面的觅食行为存在约束机制。为此，我们跨物种分析了根系觅食强度与植物躯体性状之间的关联，旨在评估作为植物行为形式的根系觅食与植物躯体性状间的协调程度。我们选取了源自中欧开阔陆生栖息地的37种多年生草本植物，将其栽培于设置了三种不同养分空间有效性梯度（陡峭梯度、平缓梯度及无梯度）的盆栽体系中。我们以存在资源空间梯度与无资源空间梯度的盆栽中根系分布差异，作为根系觅食强度的评估依据。针对该组物种，我们从公开数据库中获取了其躯体性状数据：成熟植株最大高度、平均叶面积、比叶面积、地上部分寿命……