Ecological distribution of homobaric and heterobaric leaves in tree species of Malaysian lowland tropical rainforest.

Tree species can generally be classified into two groups, heterobaric and homobaric leafed species, according to whether bundle-sheath extensions (BSEs) are found in the leaf (heterobaric leaf) or not (homobaric leaf). In this study, we study whether the leaf type is related to the growth environment and/or life form type, even in a tropical rain forest, where most trees have evergreen leaves that are generally homobaric. Accordingly, we investigated the distribution of leaf morphological differences across different life forms of 250 tree species in 45 families in a tropical rainforest.