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Strong leaf morphological, anatomical, and physiological responses of a subtropical woody bamboo (Sinarundinaria nitida) to contrasting light environments

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Abstract

Dwarf bamboos are an important understory component of the lowland and montane forests in the subtropical regions of Asia and South America, yet little is known about their physiology and phenotypic plasticity in response to changing light environments. To understand how bamboo species adapt to different light intensities, we examined leaf morphological, anatomical, and physiological differentiation of Sinarundinaria nitida (Mitford) Nakai, a subtropical woody dwarf bamboo, growing in open and shaded natural habitats in the Ailao Mountains, SW China. Compared with leaves in open areas, leaves in shaded areas had higher values in leaf size, specific leaf area, leaf nitrogen, and chlorophyll concentrations per unit area but lower values in leaf thickness, vein density, stomatal density, leaf carbon concentration, and total soluble sugar concentration. However, stomatal size and leaf phosphorus concentration per unit mass remained relatively constant regardless of light regime. Leaves in the open habitat exhibited a higher light-saturated net photosynthetic rate, dark respiration rate, non-photochemical quenching, and electron transport rate than those in the shaded habitat. The results of this study revealed that the bamboo species exhibited a high plasticity of its leaf structural and functional traits in response to different irradiances. The combination of high plasticity in leaf morphological, anatomical, and physiological traits allows this bamboo species to grow in heterogeneous habitats.

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Abbreviations

A max :

Light-saturated net photosynthetic rate

Chl:

Chlorophyll

ETR:

Electron transport rate

F v /F m :

Maximal quantum efficiency of PSII

LCP:

Light compensation point

LSP:

Light-saturation point

NPQ:

Non-photochemical quenching

PPFD:

Photosynthetic photon flux density

PSII:

Photosynthetic II

R d :

Dark respiration rate

SLA:

Specific leaf area

WUE:

Water use efficiency

δ13C:

Carbon isotopic composition

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Megan K. Bartlett (University of California Los Angeles, USA) for her valuable suggestions for the manuscript. We also thank the Ailaoshan Station for Subtropical Forest Ecosystem Studies (ASSFE) for logistic support and facilities. This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31170399) and the Science Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 135 Program (XTBG-T01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, Yunnan, China

    Shi-Jian Yang, Mei Sun, Yong-Jiang Zhang & Kun-Fang Cao

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

    Shi-Jian Yang, Mei Sun & Yong-Jiang Zhang

  3. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Yong-Jiang Zhang

  4. INRA, UMR547 PIAF, 63100, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Hervé Cochard

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  1. Shi-Jian Yang
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  2. Mei Sun
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  5. Kun-Fang Cao
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Correspondence to Kun-Fang Cao.

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Yang, SJ., Sun, M., Zhang, YJ. et al. Strong leaf morphological, anatomical, and physiological responses of a subtropical woody bamboo (Sinarundinaria nitida) to contrasting light environments. Plant Ecol 215, 97–109 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0281-z

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