Tradeoff and diversity of leaf/shoot traits among plant life forms in nonseasonal environment

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Tropical mountains provide ideal environments for plants without thermal and desiccation stresses, and where we observe a wide variation of within-and across-life form diversity of plants. This study aimed to examine ecophysiological differentiation of leaf and shoot function, based on the hypothesis that such module-level tradeoffs accelerate the differentiation in such environment. Main site was set at Mount Halimun National Park in West Java, and a comparative site at warm-temperate rain forests in Yakushima Island, southern Japan.In Mount Halimun, three-year census of leaf demography for 110 species was carried out. Leaf samples were divided into cell-wall and protoplasm components, to test the hypothesis that cell-wall protein increases with leaf longevity, which violates simple explanation of leaf-longevity vs. nitrogen content negative correlation. Several unique life forms such as large epiphytic fern and palm climbers were analyzed their growth and allometry in detail. Water potential change during new leaf flushing, plastic control of among-shoot allocation pattern within a plant crown, and allocation regulation between radial stem growth and shoot growth, were carried out.