Dataset Information

Climbing plants in a temperate rainforest understorey: searching for high light or coping with deep shade?

ABSTRACT:

Background and aims

While the climbing habit allows vines to reach well-lit canopy areas with a minimum investment in support biomass, many of them have to survive under the dim understorey light during certain stages of their life cycle. But, if the growth/survival trade-off widely reported for trees hold for climbing plants, they cannot maximize both light-interception efficiency and shade avoidance (i.e. escaping from the understorey). The seven most important woody climbers occurring in a Chilean temperate evergreen rainforest were studied with the hypothesis that light-capture efficiency of climbers would be positively associated with their abundance in the understorey.

Methods

Species abundance in the understorey was quantified from their relative frequency and density in field plots, the light environment was quantified by hemispherical photography, the photosynthetic response to light was measured with portable gas-exchange analyser, and the whole shoot light-interception efficiency and carbon gain was estimated with the 3-D computer model Y-plant.

Key results

Species differed in specific leaf area, leaf mass fraction, above ground leaf area ratio, light-interception efficiency and potential carbon gain. Abundance of species in the understorey was related to whole shoot features but not to leaf level features such as specific leaf area. Potential carbon gain was inversely related to light-interception efficiency. Mutual shading among leaves within a shoot was very low (<20 %).

Conclusions

The abundance of climbing plants in this southern rainforest understorey was directly related to their capacity to intercept light efficiently but not to their potential carbon gain. The most abundant climbers in this ecosystem match well with a shade-tolerance syndrome in contrast to the pioneer-like nature of climbers observed in tropical studies. The climbers studied seem to sacrifice high-light searching for coping with the dim understorey light.

SUBMITTER: Valladares F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3143042 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Climbing plants in a temperate rainforest understorey: searching for high light or coping with deep shade?

Valladares Fernando F Gianoli Ernesto E Saldaña Alfredo A

Annals of botany 20110617 2

<h4>Background and aims</h4>While the climbing habit allows vines to reach well-lit canopy areas with a minimum investment in support biomass, many of them have to survive under the dim understorey light during certain stages of their life cycle. But, if the growth/survival trade-off widely reported for trees hold for climbing plants, they cannot maximize both light-interception efficiency and shade avoidance (i.e. escaping from the understorey). The seven most important woody climbers occurring ...[more]

PMID: 21685433

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Dataset Information

Climbing plants in a temperate rainforest understorey: searching for high light or coping with deep shade?

Background and aims

Methods

Key results

Conclusions

Publications

Climbing plants in a temperate rainforest understorey: searching for high light or coping with deep shade?

Similar Datasets

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