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Differences in leaf nitrogen content, photosynthesis, and resource-use efficiency between Eichhornia crassipes and a native plant Monochoria vaginalis in response to altered sediment nutrient levels

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Abstract

Eichhornia crassipes is one of the world’s most prevalent invasive aquatic plants, causing significant ecological and socio-economic impacts in introduced areas. In this study, we compared the leaf resource capture- and use-related traits of E. crassipes with its confamilial native aquatic plant Monochoria vaginalis at three nutrient levels. Our results showed that leaf nitrogen content based on mass, leaf nitrogen content based on area, N:C, photosynthetic rate, specific leaf area, and leaf construction cost of E. crassipes increased significantly with increasing levels of nutrition, the mean values of these traits increased 0.55, 0.35, 0.51, 0.43, 0.21, and 0.07 times from low nutrient level to high, respectively. These traits (except for the leaf construction cost) in M. vaginalis remained unchanged. At low nutrient level, M. vaginalis had a higher leaf nitrogen content, N:C, photosynthetic rate, specific leaf area, and water-use efficiency than E. crassipes. At high nutrient level, E. crassipes had a higher photosynthetic rate and photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiency than M. vaginalis, suggesting that the invasiveness of E. crassipes was dependent on the availability of resources in environment. In addition, our results supported the fluctuating resources hypothesis, indicating that an increased level of nutrients in the environment will increase the invasiveness of E. crassipes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Jin Yang, Wenhua You, Zhong Wang, and Chang Qian for discussion and revision on the manuscript. We also greatly appreciate Dr. Sidinei M. Thomaz and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an early version of the manuscript. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30930011 and 31170339).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The National Field Station of Freshwater Ecosystem of Liangzi Lake, College of Life Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China

    Shufeng Fan, Chunhua Liu, Dan Yu & Dong Xie

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  1. Shufeng Fan
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  2. Chunhua Liu
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  3. Dan Yu
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  4. Dong Xie
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Correspondence to Chunhua Liu or Dan Yu.

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Handling editor: Sidinei Magela Thomaz

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Fan, S., Liu, C., Yu, D. et al. Differences in leaf nitrogen content, photosynthesis, and resource-use efficiency between Eichhornia crassipes and a native plant Monochoria vaginalis in response to altered sediment nutrient levels. Hydrobiologia 711, 129–137 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-013-1471-3

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