title: Latitudinal variation of leaf stomatal traits from species to community level in forests: linkage with ecosystem productivity.
abstract: To explore the latitudinal variation of stomatal traits from species to community level and their linkage with net primary productivity (NPP), we investigated leaf stomatal density (SDL) and stomatal length (SLL) across 760 species from nine forest ecosystems in eastern China, and calculated the community-level SD (SDC) and SL (SLC) through species-specific leaf area index (LAI). Our results showed that latitudinal variation in species-level SDL and SLL was minimal, but community-level SDC and SLC decreased clearly with increasing latitude. The relationship between SD and SL was negative across species and different plant functional types (PFTs), but positive at the community level. Furthermore, community-level SDC correlated positively with forest NPP, and explained 51% of the variation in NPP. These findings indicate that the trade-off by regulating SDL and SLL may be an important strategy for plant individuals to adapt to environmental changes, and temperature acts as the main factor influencing community-level stomatal traits through alteration of species composition. Importantly, our findings provide new insight into the relationship between plant traits and ecosystem function.
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Ruili
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Guirui
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Nianpeng
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Qiufeng
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Zhiwei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ge
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D018515:Plant Leaves; D054046:Plant Stomata; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable