The Variation Of Leaf Traits With Restoration Durations And Their Relationship With Productivity

Leaf traits are one of the most important functional traits of plants,which can not only reflect the photosynthetic ability of plants,but also reflect the efficiency of resource acquisition and utilization as well as the adaptation strategy to the environment.The morphological and stomatal traits of leaves are of great significance for photosynthesis and transpiration,which affect the utilization of light energy and the exchange mechanism of water vapor.At present,the research on plant functional traits is mainly focus on the level of individual or population,but the research on community function should be focused on the level of community or ecosystem.Therefore,this paper attempts to use the latest view of community traits based on unit land area to explore the relationship between plant leaf traits and productivity.In this study,we selected seven adjacent temperate forests with different restoration times following selective cutting(i.e.,6,14,25,36,45,55,and 100 years).We measured morphological traits(leaf thickness,leaf surface area,specific leaf area,and leaf dry matter content)and stomatal traits(stomatal density,stomatal size and stomatal pore area index)in 624 plant species.The main objectives of this study were to 1)quantify the variation in leaf traits among species,plant functional groups(PFGs),and community levels,2)reveal how plant community traits change depending on the restoration time,and 3)establish a link between community traits and productivity in natural forest communities.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The morphological and stomatal traits of leaves were different across species,communities at forests with different restoration durations.The traits at the level of species or plant functional groups can not replace those at the level of community.(2)At the community level,LA,SLA,and LDMC showed as a quadratic variation along a chronosequence of restoration after selected logging,but LT showed no significant variation,while stomatal traits showed no significant change with the increase of the restoration time.Moreover,the variation of leaf traits at species level and plant functional group level with different restoration durations has significant differences with community level.(3)LT,LA,and SLA had a significant positive correlation with aboveground net primary productivity(ANPP),while all three stomatal traits had significant positive correlation with ANPP.The results showed that the leaf traits could indicate the variation of ANPP.This paper analyzes the variability of leaf morphological and stomatal traits between different restoration time from species level,plant functional group level and community level.It is the first time to explore the relationship between the ecological function of natural communities and the community traits by applying the latest community traits,which provides a new perspective for revealing the variation of productivity and a theoretical basis for incorporating community traits into the ecological process model in the future.