Plant roots have greatly diversified in form and function since the emergence of the first land p... more Plant roots have greatly diversified in form and function since the emergence of the first land plants1,2, but the global organization of functional traits in roots remains poorly understood3,4. Here we analyse a global dataset of 10 functionally important root traits in metabolically active first-order roots, collected from 369 species distributed across the natural plant communities of 7 biomes. Our results identify a high degree of organization of root traits across species and biomes, and reveal a pattern that differs from expectations based on previous studies5,6 of leaf traits. Root diameter exerts the strongest influence on root trait variation across plant species, growth forms and biomes. Our analysis suggests that plants have evolved thinner roots since they first emerged in land ecosystems, which has enabled them to markedly improve their efficiency of soil exploration per unit of carbon invested and to reduce their dependence on symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi. We also found that diversity in root morphological traits is greatest in the tropics, where plant diversity is highest and many ancestral phylogenetic groups are preserved. Diversity in root morphology declines sharply across the sequence of tropical, temperate and desert biomes, presumably owing to changes in resource supply caused by seasonally inhospitable abiotic conditions. Our results suggest that root traits have evolved along a spectrum bounded by two contrasting strategies of root life: an ancestral ‘conservative’ strategy in which plants with thick roots depend on symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi for soil resources and a more-derived ‘opportunistic’ strategy in which thin roots enable plants to more efficiently leverage photosynthetic carbon for soil exploration. These findings imply that innovations of belowground traits have had an important role in preparing plants to colonize new habitats, and in generating biodiversity within and across biomes.
Plants can develop novel adaptations for nutrient acquisition in nutrient-limited ecosystems. The... more Plants can develop novel adaptations for nutrient acquisition in nutrient-limited ecosystems. These adaptations include colonization by roots of tree trunks and logs that can act as nutrient reservoirs. Termites may facilitate this root colonization by digging tunnels and accelerating decomposition in logs and tree trunks. We measured the frequency with which above-ground tree root colonization co-occurs with the presence of termites or their tunnels inside living trees above 20 cm dbh (n = 178) and dead tree trunks and logs at least 15 cm in diameter (n = 146) in a Bornean tropical forest. Roots above the soil surface co-occur with termite tunnels 39% more frequently than expected by chance in trunks of living trees and 17% more frequently than expected by chance in logs. By categorizing logs according to hardness through ease of penetration, we found that softer logs at a late stage of decay did not show co-occurrence of termite activity and roots to the same extent as harder logs. This suggests that trees forage where termites have removed physical barriers to colonization. In this fashion, termites may accelerate nutrient cycling in tropical rain forests.
One of the most distinct but unresolved global patterns is the apparent variation in plant–symbio... more One of the most distinct but unresolved global patterns is the apparent variation in plant–symbiont nutrient strategies across biomes. This pattern is central to our understanding of plant–soil–nutrient feedbacks in the land biosphere, which, in turn, are essential for our ability to predict the future dynamics of the Earth system. Here, we present an evolution-based trait-modelling approach for resolving (1) the organization of plant–symbiont relationships across biomes worldwide and (2) the emergent consequences for plant community composition and land biogeochemical cycles. Using game theory, we allow plants to use different belowground strategies to acquire nutrients and compete within local plant–soil–nutrient cycles in boreal, temperate and tropical biomes. The evolutionarily stable strategies that emerge from this analysis allow us to predict the distribution of belowground symbioses worldwide, the sequence and timing of plant succession, the bistability of ecto- versus arbuscular mycorrhizae in temperate and tropical forests, and major differences in the land carbon and nutrient cycles across biomes. Our findings imply that belowground symbioses have been central to the evolutionary assembly of plant communities and plant–nutrient feedbacks at the scale of land biomes. We conclude that complex global patterns emerge from local between-organism interactions in the context of Darwinian natural selection and evolution, and that the underlying dynamics can be mechanistically probed by our low-dimensional modelling approach.
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Papers by Mingzhen Lu