rhizome severing increases root lifespan of leymus chinensis in a typical steppe of inner mongolia粉末切断增加根的寿命在内蒙古典型草原羊草.pdfVIP

Rhizome Severing Increases Root Lifespan of Leymus chinensis in a Typical Steppe of Inner Mongolia 1 1,2 1,2 1 1 Wenming Bai , Fen Xun , Yang Li , Wenhao Zhang , Linghao Li * 1 State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2 Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Science, Yuquanlu, Beijing, China Abstract Background: Root lifespan is an important trait that determines plants’ ability to acquire and conserve soil resources. There have been several studies investigating characteristics of root lifespan of both woody and herbaceous species. However, most of the studies have focused on non-clonal plants, and there have been little data on root lifespan for clonal plants that occur widely in temperate grasslands. Methodology/Principal Findings: We investigated the effects of rhizome severing on overall root lifespan of Leymus chinensis, a clonal, dominant grass species in the temperate steppe in northern China, in a 2-year field study using modified rhizotron technique. More specifically, we investigated the effects of rhizome severing on root lifespan of roots born in different seasons and distributed at different soil depths. Rhizome severing led to an increase in the overall root lifespan from 81 to 103 days. The increase in root lifespan exhibited spatial and temporal characteristics such that it increased lifespan for roots distributed in the top two soil layers and for roots born in summer and spring, but it had no effect on lifespan of roots in the deep soil layer and born in autumn. We also examined the effect of rhizome severing on carbohydrate and N contents in roots, and found t