Understanding the variation of functional traits of plant species along forest successional gradients may provides useful insights into community assemblages. However, species performance during forest succession is controversial. We explored the variation of leaf traits along a forest succession by examining ten leaf traits in four successional stages in a monsoon evergreen broad-leaved forest in Southwest China. Results showed significant differences in all leaf traits except leaf area and leaf carbon content among the successional stages. Five leaf traits were highly correlated to successional stage, while the first principal component showed no correlation with successional stage. The first principal component accounted for 56.1% of the total variation in all ten leaf traits. Almost 50% of the relationships between leaf traits differed along the examined successional gradient, indicating that leaf traits were affected by the successional stage.
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Citation
Liu W, Su J (2017). Successional leaf traits of monsoon evergreen broad-leaved forest, Southwest China. iForest 10: 391-396. - doi: 10.3832/ifor2045-009
Academic Editor
Chris Eastaugh
Paper history
Received: Mar 08, 2016
Accepted: Nov 18, 2016
First online: Mar 16, 2017
Publication Date: Apr 30, 2017
Publication Time: 3.93 months
© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2017
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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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