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Nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and allocation strategies among shrub organs: the effects of plant growth forms and nitrogen-fixation types

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Abstract

Aims

We aimed to explore the influences of plant functional groups on nutrient concentrations and allocation strategies among shrub organs, as well as to examine the effects of climate, soil and species on nutrient concentrations in shrubs of different plant functional groups.

Methods

We investigated the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations in roots, stems and leaves and their influencing factors of 187 shrub species in the shrublands across southern China, and we also examined the relationships between N and P among various organs using scaling analysis.

Results

The scaling relationships of N and P tended to be allometric between leaf and non-leaf organs, while they tended to be isometric among non-leaf organs. Plant functional groups affected nutrient allocation among shrub organs, where a higher proportion of nutrients were present in the stems and roots of evergreen shrubs and non-legume shrubs when compared to deciduous shrubs and legume shrubs as nutrients within a plant increased. Among organs, N and P concentrations were higher in leaves than in stems and roots. Among functional groups, evergreen shrubs and legume shrubs were more P-limited than deciduous shrubs and non-legume shrubs, respectively. The N and P concentrations in evergreen shrubs were lower and more sensitive to environmental change than in deciduous shrubs. Both N and P contents in legume shrubs were higher and more homeostatic than those of non-legume shrubs.

Conclusions

Plant growth forms and N-fixation types exerted strong effects on nutrient concentrations and allocations among shrub organs. The influences of climate and soil on shrub N and P concentrations differed by plant functional groups.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. Feike A. Dijkstra for his comments and editorial assistance and to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments to an earlier version of this manuscript. We thank Jielin Ge for his helpful suggestions on this manuscript. Thanks to workers involved in the field investigation. We would also like to thank Prof. Ryan Frazier at the Arizona State University for his assistance with English language and grammatical editing of the manuscript. Thanks to the Measurement Center of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences for sample measurement. This work was funded by the ‘Strategic Priority Research Program - Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Related Issues’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA05050302).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environment Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Science, No.20 Nanxincun, Xiangshan, Beijing, 100093, China

    Qiang Zhang, Gaoming Xiong, Wenting Xu, Yang Wang, Changming Zhao & Zongqiang Xie

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100049, China

    Qiang Zhang & Yang Wang

  3. College of Forest, Central South University of Forestry & Technology, Changsha, 410004, China

    Jiaxiang Li

  4. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Zhijun Lu

  5. South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Yuelin Li

  6. Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhiyao Tang

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  1. Qiang Zhang
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  2. Gaoming Xiong
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  3. Jiaxiang Li
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Correspondence to Zongqiang Xie.

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Zhang, Q., Xiong, G., Li, J. et al. Nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and allocation strategies among shrub organs: the effects of plant growth forms and nitrogen-fixation types. Plant Soil 427, 305–319 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3655-0

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