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Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem

Soil moisture and salt play key roles in regulating desert plant nutrient cycles on a local scale. However, information on the response of plant nutrient stoichiometric patterns to soil water and salt gradients is limited. Here, we assessed leaf N and P levels of 18 species of desert plants and meas...

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Autores principales: Gong, Yanming, Lv, Guanghui, Guo, Zhenjie, Chen, Yue, Cao, Jing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28754987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07240-6
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author Gong, Yanming
Lv, Guanghui
Guo, Zhenjie
Chen, Yue
Cao, Jing
author_facet Gong, Yanming
Lv, Guanghui
Guo, Zhenjie
Chen, Yue
Cao, Jing
author_sort Gong, Yanming
collection PubMed
description Soil moisture and salt play key roles in regulating desert plant nutrient cycles on a local scale. However, information on the response of plant nutrient stoichiometric patterns to soil water and salt gradients is limited. Here, we assessed leaf N and P levels of 18 species of desert plants and measured the corresponding soil nutrient, water and salt concentrations, at four dry sites, five humid-saline sites and four humid-non-saline sites (reference sites) along a transect in a temperate desert in Xinjiang Province, northwest China. Our results indicated that the desert plants had lower N and P concentrations and higher N:P mass ratios in dry and humid-saline sites than in the humid-non-saline sites. Unlike the single-factor effect of salinity driving the plasticity of species N concentration, aridity and salinity interacted in their impact on the plasticity of plant P and the N:P ratio. Moreover, the plant community N and P concentrations and N:P ratio exhibited significant positive linear and nonlinear correlations with soil moisture in shallow and deep soil, respectively. Aridity reduced the N plasticity and increased P plasticity of the plant community. The results strongly supported the hypothesis that soil moisture and salt concentration were the dominant drivers of leaf N and P concentrations and their plasticity across species and community scales.
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spelling pubmed-55337382017-08-03 Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem Gong, Yanming Lv, Guanghui Guo, Zhenjie Chen, Yue Cao, Jing Sci Rep Article Soil moisture and salt play key roles in regulating desert plant nutrient cycles on a local scale. However, information on the response of plant nutrient stoichiometric patterns to soil water and salt gradients is limited. Here, we assessed leaf N and P levels of 18 species of desert plants and measured the corresponding soil nutrient, water and salt concentrations, at four dry sites, five humid-saline sites and four humid-non-saline sites (reference sites) along a transect in a temperate desert in Xinjiang Province, northwest China. Our results indicated that the desert plants had lower N and P concentrations and higher N:P mass ratios in dry and humid-saline sites than in the humid-non-saline sites. Unlike the single-factor effect of salinity driving the plasticity of species N concentration, aridity and salinity interacted in their impact on the plasticity of plant P and the N:P ratio. Moreover, the plant community N and P concentrations and N:P ratio exhibited significant positive linear and nonlinear correlations with soil moisture in shallow and deep soil, respectively. Aridity reduced the N plasticity and increased P plasticity of the plant community. The results strongly supported the hypothesis that soil moisture and salt concentration were the dominant drivers of leaf N and P concentrations and their plasticity across species and community scales. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC5533738/ /pubmed/28754987 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07240-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Gong, Yanming
Lv, Guanghui
Guo, Zhenjie
Chen, Yue
Cao, Jing
Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title_full Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title_fullStr Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title_full_unstemmed Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title_short Influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
title_sort influence of aridity and salinity on plant nutrients scales up from species to community level in a desert ecosystem
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28754987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07240-6
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