Abstract
Many plant traits respond to changes in water availability and might be useful for understanding ecosystem properties such as net primary production (NPP). This is especially evident in grasslands where NPP is water-limited and primarily determined by the traits of dominant species. We measured root and shoot morphology, leaf hydraulic traits, and NPP of four dominant North American prairie grasses in response to four levels of soil moisture in a greenhouse experiment. We expected that traits of species from drier regions would be more responsive to reduced water availability and that this would make these species more resistant to low soil moisture than species from wetter regions. All four species grew taller, produced more biomass, and increased total root length in wetter treatments. Each species reduced its leaf turgor loss point (TLP) in drier conditions, but only two species (one xeric, one mesic) maintained leaf water potential above TLP. We identified a suite of traits that clearly distinguished species from one another, but, surprisingly, these traits were relatively unresponsive to reduced soil moisture. Specifically, more xeric species produced thinner roots with higher specific root length and had a lower root mass fraction. This suggest that root traits are critical for distinguishing species from one another but might not respond strongly to changing water availability, though this warrants further investigation in the field. Overall, we found that NPP of these dominant grass species responded similarly to varying levels of soil moisture despite differences in species morphology, physiology, and habitat of origin.
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We would like to thank the greenhouse staff at Colorado State University as well as Victoria Klimkowski for assistance with maintaining treatments.
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Primary support for this project came from the NSF Macrosystems Biology Program (DEB‐1137378, 1137363, and 1137342) with additional funding from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Award 2019–67011-29615).
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RJGN, AJF, and IJS conceived, designed, and performed the experiment with input and funding support from AKK and MDS. RJGN analyzed the data and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript; all authors provided editorial advice.
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Griffin-Nolan, R.J., Felton, A.J., Slette, I.J. et al. Traits that distinguish dominant species across aridity gradients differ from those that respond to soil moisture. Oecologia 201, 311–322 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05315-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05315-y