Abstract
Extreme events such as extreme drought and precipitation are expected to increase in intensity and/or duration in the face of climate change. Such changes significantly affect plant productivity and the biomass allocation between reproductive and vegetation organs (i.e., reproductive allocation). Our aims are to test the effects of water addition on the trade-offs in allocation of plant biomass and whether such effects are modified by species. A manipulative experiment was conducted from May 2000 to October 2001, where four dominant plant species (i.e., Leymus chinensis, Stipa grandis, Artemisia frigida, and Potentilla acaulis) in the Inner Mongolia steppe in China were treated with 8 levels of water addition. Results demonstrated that water addition significantly affected the reproductive allocation of plants, and such effects were modified by species. Specifically, with increasing water availability, L. chinensis was not impacted, while A. frigida allocated more biomass to reproductive organs than to vegetative organs, while such allocation in S. grandis and P. acaulis first decreased, and then increased after reaching a peak. Our results indicated that plant species can adjust their reproductive allocation patterns to deal with water availability gradients. Climatic factors such as rainfall and temperature usually co-appearing, thus future research should explore the joint effects of several climate change factors on grasslands in order to maintain the health and sustainability of grasslands.
Highlights
Climate change crucially impacts the dynamics of plant individuals, populations and ecosystems (Jentsch et al, 2007; Hoover et al, 2014; Estiarte et al, 2016; Ryalls et al, 2016; Collins et al, 2017)
S. grandis had the highest total biomass, and followed by L. chinensis and A. frigida, and P. acaulis had the lowest total biomass (Figure 2A), and the same pattern was found in the vegetative biomass (Figure 2C)
We found that the reproductive value (i.e., R: T ratio in this case) of S. grandis was lower than that of species with rhizomes and stolons (i.e., L. chinensis, A. frigida, and P. acaulis), contrast with the finding of Wilson and Thompson (1989)
Summary
Climate change crucially impacts the dynamics of plant individuals, populations and ecosystems (Jentsch et al, 2007; Hoover et al, 2014; Estiarte et al, 2016; Ryalls et al, 2016; Collins et al, 2017). Many studies have explored the effects of climate change on biomass allocation of plants (Wilson and Thompson, 1989; Fay et al, 2000; Simon et al, 2007; Brenes-Arguedas et al, 2013). Most of these studies only focus on aboveground biomass (Achten et al, 2010; Liu et al, 2015), and fewer have considered the above/belowground allocations, and even fewer considered the biomass allocations between reproductive and non-reproductive organs. A gap in knowledge exists on the reproductive allocation between these organs of plants (Kreyling et al, 2014)
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