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Changes in defense traits of young leaves in subtropical forests succession

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Abstract

Plants develop diverse adaptive traits in changeable environments, yet whether plant defense traits change during succession remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the young leaf physical traits (i.e., upright orientation of leaves, trichomes, an enhanced cuticle, and a multilayered epidermis) and leaf color trait (i.e., red pigmentation) of dominant plants in three subtropical forests. These forests included a pioneer forest, a mixed coniferous-broadleaved forest, and a monsoon-evergreen broadleaved forest representing early, middle, and later successional stages, respectively. Our results show that the red color trait in young leaves is related to anti-herbivory defense, and the percentage of species with red young leaves is higher in later than in early succession. Physical defense tends to be weaker for red young leaves than for green young leaves in early and middle successions. In addition, the number of defense traits of young leaves increases with succession. We speculate that young leaves in subtropical forests depend increasingly on multiple defense traits during succession because of the increased biotic stresses and environmental complexity in later succession.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31570422) and Guangdong Science and Technology Program (no. 2016A030303044). We thank Mr Yiming Fan for field investigation. Thanks are also due to Prof. Bruce Jaffee for English editing and constructive comments and to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an early version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Botany, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Taotao Han, Jun Wang, Hai Ren, Huilin Yi & Qianmei Zhang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Taotao Han

  3. Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, USDA Forest Service, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA

    Qinfeng Guo

Authors
  1. Taotao Han
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  2. Jun Wang
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  3. Hai Ren
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  4. Huilin Yi
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  5. Qianmei Zhang
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  6. Qinfeng Guo
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Correspondence to Hai Ren.

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Communicated by Shayne Martin Jacobs.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 The species compositions and species important values in the three successional forests
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 The defense traits of dominant species in different successional stages of subtropical forests in South China
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Appendix 3

See Table 5.

Table 5 The environment factors in the three successional forests in South China (unpublished)
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Han, T., Wang, J., Ren, H. et al. Changes in defense traits of young leaves in subtropical forests succession. Plant Ecol 220, 305–320 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-019-00916-1

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