Abstract
Trade-offs among carbon sinks constrain how trees physiologically, ecologically, and evolutionarily respond to their environments. These trade-offs typically fall along a productive growth to conservative, bet-hedging continuum. How nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) stored in living tree cells (known as carbon stores) fit in this trade-off framework is not well understood. We examined relationships between growth and storage using both within species genetic variation from a common garden, and across species phenotypic variation from a global database. We demonstrate that storage is actively accumulated, as part of a conservative, bet-hedging life history strategy. Storage accumulates at the expense of growth both within and across species. Within the species Populus trichocarpa, genetic trade-offs show that for each additional unit of wood area growth (in cm2 yr−1) that genotypes invest in, they lose 1.2 to 1.7 units (mg g−1 NSC) of storage. Across species, for each additional unit of area growth (in cm2 yr−1), trees, on average, reduce their storage by 9.5% in stems and 10.4% in roots. Our findings impact our understanding of basic plant biology, fit storage into a widely used growth-survival trade-off spectrum describing life history strategy, and challenges the assumptions of passive storage made in ecosystem models today.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2211-2222 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | New Phytologist |
| Volume | 235 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2022 |
Funding
The authors thank ME Furze, CF White, DL Des Marais, and J Martínez‐Vilalta for comments. This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program, by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. DGE1745303, and the Explorer’s club. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the Department of Energy. ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) under contract number DE‐SC0014664. Support for the establishment, maintenance and genetic resources of the common gardens was provided by the Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), a Bioenergy Research Center supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the US Department of Energy Office of Science. AS was supported by a Harvard University Bullard Fellowship. Populus The authors thank ME Furze, CF White, DL Des Marais, and J Martínez-Vilalta for comments. This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program, by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. DGE1745303, and the Explorer’s club. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the Department of Energy. ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) under contract number DE-SC0014664. Support for the establishment, maintenance and genetic resources of the Populus common gardens was provided by the Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), a Bioenergy Research Center supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the US Department of Energy Office of Science. AS was supported by a Harvard University Bullard Fellowship.
Keywords
- allocation trade-offs
- carbon allocation
- common garden
- growth
- heritability
- nonstructural carbohydrates
- plasticity
- storage