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High photosynthetic capacity and energy-use efficiency benefit both growth and chemical defense in invasive plants

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Abstract

In nature some successful invasive plants grow faster and are better chemical defenders than native plants, which appears to contradict the conventional theory that plant growth and chemical defense are trade-offs in terms of the allocation of limited resources. Using greenhouse experiments we compared the growth, chemical defensive matters (condensed tannins and total phenolics) and energy-use strategies (construction cost and energy-use efficiency) of four highly noxious invasive plants to their congeneric or co-occurring native species in subtropical China. We hypothesized that the trade-offs between growth and chemical defense in invasive plants are alleviated, and this alleviation benefits from their high photosynthetic capacities and energy-use strategies. Our results showed that all the four invasive plants grew faster than their native counterparts, and three of them had higher condensed tannins and the remaining one had higher total phenolics, indicating the invasive plants achieved both faster growth and stronger chemical defense. Moreover, the growth rate positively related to condensed tannins but negatively to total phenolics in both invasive and native plants, indicating the chemical-specific pattern of the trade-offs. Our results demonstrate that the higher photosynthetic capacity and energy-use efficiency together with lower biomass construction cost facilitated the faster growth and stronger chemical defense in invasive plants, providing an insight for their chemical-specific trade-offs between growth and chemical defense.

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Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate Dr. Gang Li and Dr. Baoming Chen for their valuable advice on this manuscript. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (31971498, 31200380), Guangzhou Science and Technology Project (201707010226), the Natural Science foundation of Guangdong (S2013010012054), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong (2019B121202001), the Knowledge Innovation Program of the CAS (KSCX2-EW-J-28), Zhongkai Scholars Research Fund (KA180581314), and Research Fund from Department of Forest of Guangdong Province (1210-184YDZB1254) financially supported this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Guangyan Ni, Ping Zhao, Liwei Zhu & Lei Ouyang

  2. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Botany, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Guangyan Ni, Ping Zhao, Liwei Zhu & Lei Ouyang

  3. Innovation Academy of South China Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Guangyan Ni, Ping Zhao, Liwei Zhu & Lei Ouyang

  4. Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering, Guangzhou, 510225, China

    Youhua Ye & Wei Wu

  5. College of Life Sciences, Ludong University, Yantai, 264025, Shandong, China

    Yuping Hou

  6. Institute of Environment and Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, Danzhou, 571737, Hainan, China

    Qiaoqiao Huang

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  1. Guangyan Ni
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  3. Youhua Ye
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  7. Wei Wu
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Correspondence to Guangyan Ni or Ping Zhao.

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Communicated by Marko Rohlfs.

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Ni, G., Zhao, P., Ye, Y. et al. High photosynthetic capacity and energy-use efficiency benefit both growth and chemical defense in invasive plants. Chemoecology 30, 69–78 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00049-020-00299-0

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