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Biomass and Stored Carbohydrate Compensation after Above-Ground Biomass Removal in a Perennial Herb: Does Environmental Productivity Play a Role?

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Abstract

Many plant species are able to tolerate severe disturbance leading to removal of a substantial portion of the body by resprouting from intact or fragmented organs. Resprouting enables plants to compensate for biomass loss and complete their life cycles. The degree of disturbance tolerance, and hence the ecological advantage of damage tolerance (in contrast to alternative strategies), has been reported to be affected by environmental productivity. In our study, we examined the influence of soil nutrients (as an indicator of environmental productivity) on biomass and stored carbohydrate compensation after removal of aboveground parts in the perennial resprouter Plantago lanceolata. Specifically, we tested and compared the effects of nutrient availability on biomass and carbon storage in damaged and undamaged individuals. Damaged plants of P. lanceolata compensated neither in terms of biomass nor overall carbon storage. However, whereas in the nutrient-poor environment, root total non-structural carbohydrate concentrations (TNC) were similar for damaged and undamaged plants, in the nutrient-rich environment, damaged plants had remarkably higher TNC than undamaged plants. Based on TNC allocation patterns, we conclude that tolerance to disturbance is promoted in more productive environments, where higher photosynthetic efficiency allows for successful replenishment of carbohydrates. Although plants under nutrient-rich conditions did not compensate in terms of biomass or seed production, they entered winter with higher content of carbohydrates, which might result in better performance in the next growing season. This otherwise overlooked compensation mechanism might be responsible for inconsistent results reported from other studies.

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Acknowledgement

This study was financially supported by the Czech Science Foundation, grant No. P505/10/P173, GA 526/09/0963 and the institutional long-term research development project No. RVO 67985939. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript and to Jonathan Rosenthal who offered helpful comments and significantly improved our English. We also thank Michaela Latzel for her work on the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Zámek 1, CZ-252 43, Průhonice, Czech Republic

    Vít Latzel

  2. Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, CH-3013, Bern, Switzerland

    Vít Latzel

  3. Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Dukelská 135, CZ-379 82, Třeboň, Czech Republic

    Štěpán Janeček, Tomáš Hájek & Jitka Klimešová

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  1. Vít Latzel
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  2. Štěpán Janeček
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  3. Tomáš Hájek
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  4. Jitka Klimešová
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Correspondence to Vít Latzel.

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Latzel, V., Janeček, Š., Hájek, T. et al. Biomass and Stored Carbohydrate Compensation after Above-Ground Biomass Removal in a Perennial Herb: Does Environmental Productivity Play a Role?. Folia Geobot 49, 17–29 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-013-9162-4

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