Linking leaf economic and hydraulic traits with early-age growth performance and survival of .

Selection on plant functional traits may occur through their direct effects on fitness (or a fitness component), or may be mediated by attributes of plant performance which have a direct impact on fitness. Understanding this link is particularly challenging for long-lived organisms, such as forest trees, where lifetime fitness assessments are rarely achievable, and performance features and fitness components are usually quantified from early-life history stages. Accordingly, we studied a cohort of trees from multiple populations of grown in a common-garden field trial established at the hot and dry end of the species distribution on the island of Tasmania, Australia.

Termite sensitivity to temperature affects global wood decay rates.

Deadwood is a large global carbon store with its store size partially determined by biotic decay. Microbial wood decay rates are known to respond to changing temperature and precipitation. Termites are also important decomposers in the tropics but are less well studied.

Leaf Economic and Hydraulic Traits Signal Disparate Climate Adaptation Patterns in Two Co-Occurring Woodland Eucalypts.

With climate change impacting trees worldwide, enhancing adaptation capacity has become an important goal of provenance translocation strategies for forestry, ecological renovation, and biodiversity conservation. Given that not every species can be studied in detail, it is important to understand the extent to which climate adaptation patterns can be generalised across species, in terms of the selective agents and traits involved. We here compare patterns of genetic-based population (co)variation in leaf economic and hydraulic traits, climate-trait associations, and genomic differentiation of two widespread tree species ( and ).

Microbial processing of plant remains is co-limited by multiple nutrients in global grasslands.

Microbial processing of aggregate-unprotected organic matter inputs is key for soil fertility, long-term ecosystem carbon and nutrient sequestration and sustainable agriculture. We investigated the effects of adding multiple nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium plus nine essential macro- and micro-nutrients) on decomposition and biochemical transformation of standard plant materials buried in 21 grasslands from four continents. Addition of multiple nutrients weakly but consistently increased decomposition and biochemical transformation of plant remains during the peak-season, concurrent with changes in microbial exoenzymatic activity.