ArticleTree physiology2021
Predictability of leaf traits with climate and elevation: a case study in Gongga Mountain, China.
Article in Tree physiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Global distribution and changes of leaf-level intrinsic water use efficiency and their responses to water stress.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Temporal constraints on leaf-level trait plasticity for next-generation land surface models.Annals of botany · 2025Review
- Global photosynthetic capacity jointly determined by enzyme kinetics and eco-evo-environmental drivers.Fundamental research · 2025Article
- Response of aboveground organs of Woody plants in the Qaidam Basin in China to aridity via functional economic spectra.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- Variation in leaf functional traits ofFrontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Spatial Metabolomic Profiling of Pinelliae Rhizoma from Different Leaf Types Using Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Leaf Functional Traits and Their Influencing Factors in Six Typical Vegetation Communities.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Leaf nutrient traits exhibit greater environmental plasticity compared to resource utilization traits along an elevational gradient.Frontiers in plant science · 2024Article
- Optimality principles explaining divergent responses of alpine vegetation to environmental change.Global change biology · 2023Article
- Leaf traits divergence and correlations of woody plants among the three plant functional types on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Leaf nitrogen from the perspective of optimal plant function.The Journal of ecology · 2022Article
- Leaf morphological traits as adaptations to multiple climate gradients.The Journal of ecology · 2022Article
- Coordination of plant hydraulic and photosynthetic traits: confronting optimality theory with field measurements.The New phytologist · 2021Article
- Global climate and nutrient controls of photosynthetic capacity.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Thermal Acclimation of Foliar Carbon Metabolism inFrontiers in plant science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Leaf mass per area (Ma), nitrogen content per unit leaf area (Narea), maximum carboxylation capacity (Vcmax) and the ratio of leaf-internal to ambient CO2 partial pressure (χ) are important traits related to photosynthetic function, and they show systematic variation along climatic and elevational gradients. Separating the effects of air pressure and climate along elevational gradients is challenging due to the covariation of elevation, pressure and climate. However, recently developed models based on optimality theory offer an independent way to predict leaf traits and thus to separate the contributions of different controls. We apply optimality theory to predict variation in leaf traits across 18 sites in the Gongga Mountain region. We show that the models explain 59% of trait variability on average, without site- or region-specific calibration. Temperature, photosynthetically active radiation, vapor pressure deficit, soil moisture and growing season length are all necessary to explain the observed patterns. The direct effect of air pressure is shown to have a relatively minor impact. These findings contribute to a growing body of research indicating that leaf-level traits vary with the physical environment in predictable ways, suggesting a promising direction for the improvement of terrestrial ecosystem models.
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