Leaf plasticity of species under different light intensities in an urban rainforest

Abstract

Leaf characteristics of plants are useful to understand vegetation changes under different environmental pressures because species deal with variations in the levels of luminosity during the process of ecological succession. Assuming that the light availability is a good predictor of the variation of the leaf characteristics, we hypothesized that in environments with a higher light incidence, there will be a greater variation on leaf characteristics (mean and standard deviation) in an urban rainforest fragment. After confirming that geographic distances did not influence the values of the leaf variability indices, Linear Mixed Models (LMMs) were constructed to verify the influence of light intensity on leaf characteristics. All the evaluated leaf characteristics (AF = leaf area, TMSF = leaf dry matter content, AFE = specific leaf area and Cc_mass = chlorophyll content) presented smaller variability in A4<AB. The area with the highest light incidence (A4<AB) showed less variation in the standard deviation, which may indicate that plants in this environment are under the influence of disturbances, which leads to reduced variability. The light was not a good indicator of leaf variability. The AF, AFE, TMSF and Cc_mass, although widely variable in morphological and physiological terms, shown to have less variation in the area with a higher incidence of light and greater disturbances, indicating that more disturbed environments influence on the leaf variability decrease.