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Responses to nitrogen pulses and growth under low nitrogen availability in invasive and native tree species with differing successional status

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Abstract

Invasive species are frequently found in recently disturbed sites. To examine how these disturbance-dependent invasive species exploit resource pulses resulting from disturbance, twelve physiological and morphological traits, including age-dependent responsiveness in leaf traits to nitrogen pulse, were compared between Bischofia javanica, an invasive tree species in Ogasawara islands, and three native Ogasawara species, each having a different successional status. When exposed to a nitrogen pulse, invasive B. javanica showed higher increases in photosynthetic capacity, leaf area, epidermal cell number and cell size in leaves of broad age classes, and root nitrogen absorption ability than two native mid-/late or late-successional species, but showed no particular superiority to a native pioneer species in these responses. Under low nitrogen, however, it showed the largest relative growth rate among the four species, while the native pioneer showed the lowest growth. From these results, we concluded that the combination of moderately high responsiveness to resource pulses and the ability to maintain steady growth under resource limitations may give B. javanica a competitive advantage over a series of native species with different successional status from early to late-successional stages.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Naoko Yamashita and Shuichi Sugiyama for helpful advice in the analysis and collection of data, and Kouki Hikosaka for valuable comments of earlier version of this manuscript. Two anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by Grant-in-aid of the Japan Ministry of Education, Science and Culture [18770022, 24370009] and by grant-in-aid from Fujiwara Natural History foundation.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Minamiosawa 1-1, Hachioji, Tokyo, 192-0397, Japan

    Yoko Osone

  2. Department of Natural Science, International Christian University, Mitaka, Japan

    Yoko Osone

  3. Department of Plant Ecology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yoko Osone, Kenichi Yazaki & Takeshi Masaki

  4. Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Ohtsu, Japan

    Atsushi Ishida

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Osone, Y., Yazaki, K., Masaki, T. et al. Responses to nitrogen pulses and growth under low nitrogen availability in invasive and native tree species with differing successional status. J Plant Res 127, 315–328 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-013-0609-8

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