seedling stage strategies as a means of habitat specialization in herbaceous plants苗期策略是草本植物的栖息地的专业化.pdfVIP

Seedling Stage Strategies as a Means of Habitat Specialization in Herbaceous Plants 1 ¤ 2 Dirk-Jan ten Brink * , Hans Henrik Bruun 1 Biodiversity Group, Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, 2 Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Abstract The regeneration niche has been little investigated in studies of community assembly and plant distribution. We examined adaptive associations between seedling traits and habitat specialization. Two habitat contrasts were investigated across several evolutionary lineages of angiosperms: species specialized to forest vs. open habitats and to dry vs. wet habitats. We also tested whether effects of shade and drought vary independently or, alternatively, if shade may amplify effects on drought-stressed plants. Seedling response in terms of growth rate, height, slenderness, specific leaf area (SLA) and degree of elongation (longest internode; petiole or leaf-sheath depending on species’ morphology) to light and watering treatments was assessed. We used a factorial design involving three light regimes and two watering frequencies. The open- shaded habitat contrast and the dry-wet habitat contrast were investigated using six and five pairs of congeneric species, respectively. The congeneric species pair design controlled for confounding effects of evolutionary history prior to divergence in habitat specialization. Seedling growth rate generally decreased with shade and reduced watering frequency. Plant height was generally largest at intermediate light. Specialization to shaded habitats was associated with a more conservative growth strategy, i.e. showing a more modest g