Leading trait dimensions in flood-tolerant plants.

Background And Aims: While trait-based approaches have provided critical insights into general plant functioning, we lack a comprehensive quantitative view on plant strategies in flooded conditions. Plants adapted to flooded conditions have specific traits (e.g.

Global patterns of the leaf economics spectrum in wetlands.

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes consistent correlations among a variety of leaf traits that reflect a gradient from conservative to acquisitive plant strategies. So far, whether the LES holds in wetland plants at a global scale has been unclear. Using data on 365 wetland species from 151 studies, we find that wetland plants in general show a shift within trait space along the same common slope as observed in non-wetland plants, with lower leaf mass per area, higher leaf nitrogen and phosphorus, faster photosynthetic rates, and shorter leaf life span compared to non-wetland plants.

Recovery of the CO sink in a remnant peatland following water table lowering.

Peatland biological, physical and chemical properties change over time in response to alterations in long-term water table position. Such changes complicate our ability to predict the response of peatland carbon stocks to sustained drying. In order to better understand the effect of sustained lowering of the water table on peatland carbon dynamics, we re-visited a drainage-affected bog, repeating eddy covariance measurements of CO flux after a 16-year interval.

Water table fluctuations control CO exchange in wet and dry bogs through different mechanisms.

High water tables (WT) stabilise peatland carbon (C) through regulation of biogeochemical processes. The impact of peatland WT on ecosystem function, including C exchange, alters over time, and the factors that cause some peatlands to display resilience and others to undergo degradation are poorly understood. Here we use CO flux measurements, measured by eddy covariance, to compare ecosystem function between two raised bogs; one drainage-affected, with a deep and fluctuating water table and the other near-natural, with a shallow and stable water table.

Systematics and ecology of the Australasian genus Empodisma (Restionaceae) and description of a new species from peatlands in northern New Zealand.

The genus Empodisma comprises two species that are ecologically important in wetland habitats. Empodisma gracillimum is restricted to south-western Australia, whereas Empodisma minus is found in Tasmania, eastern Australia and New Zealand. We sequenced three cpDNA genes for 15 individuals of Empodisma sampled from throughout the range of the species.

Foliar 15N natural abundance indicates phosphorus limitation of bog species.

Foliar delta15N, %N and %P in the dominant woody and herbaceous species across nutrient gradients in New Zealand restiad (family Restionaceae) raised bogs revealed marked differences in plant delta15N correlations with P. The two heath shrubs, Leptospermum scoparium (Myrtaceae) and Dracophyllum scoparium (Epacridaceae), showed considerable isotopic variation (-2.03 to -15.