10.5061/DRYAD.4T3R6
Martin, Adam R.
University of Toronto
Rapidel, Bruno
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le
Développement
Roupsard, Olivier
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le
Développement
Van den Meersche, Karel
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le
Développement
de Melo Virginio Filho, Elias
Centro Agronomico Tropical De Investigacion Y Ensenanza Catie
Barrios, Mirna
University of Toronto
Isaac, Marney E.
University of Toronto
Data from: Intraspecific trait variation across multiple scales: the leaf
economics spectrum in coffee
Dryad
dataset
2017
Leaf trait
Coffea arabica
Photosynthesis
Agroecology
2017-10-05T00:00:00Z
2017-10-05T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12790
132376 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Understanding species differences in plant functional traits has been
critical in developing a mechanistic understanding of terrestrial
ecological processes. Greater attention is now being placed on
understanding the extent, causes and consequences of intraspecific trait
variation (ITV). ITV is especially important in governing ecological
processes in cropping systems, where only a small number of species or
genotypes exist in high abundances. However, it remains unclear if key
principles of trait-based ecology – namely the leaf economics spectrum
(LES) – also describe intraspecific variation in crop functional biology.
There also remains a need to understand whether ITV within crops is
random, or structured across environmental, management-related or
biological levels of organization in agroecosystems. We employed a nested
design field survey to evaluate ITV in leaf traits in coffee (Coffea
arabica), one of the world's most widespread tropical crops. We
evaluated ITV in eight physiological, morphological and chemical leaf
traits, across five nested categorical levels (sites, management systems,
spatial location, plant identity, branch identity). We compared patterns
of LES trait covariation in coffee, to interspecific patterns observed
across over 700 wild plant species. Patterns of bivariate and multivariate
ITV in coffee were broadly consistent with, but considerably weaker than,
interspecific patterns associated with the LES, indicating that crops may
systematically diverge from global patterns of trait trade-offs observed
in wild plants. Physiological traits varied most widely (coefficient of
variation (cv) 42–107%), followed by morphological traits (cv = 15–38%)
and chemical traits (cv = 3–11%). Physiological ITV was best explained by
the site in which a coffee plant was growing (17–55% explained), while ITV
for chemical traits was best explained by management treatments within
sites (25–36%); morphological ITV was higher even at the individual tree
level or branch level and remained largely unexplained. Our results
support the hypothesis that artificial selection and high-resource
agricultural environments lead crops to systematically deviate from
patterns of leaf trait covariation observed across wild plants species.
Coupled with an understanding of how different traits vary systematically
across multiple levels of biological organization, these findings help
integrate ITV into future analyses of agroecosystem structure and
function.
Martin et al. Functional EcologyFunctional leaf trait data for Coffea
arabica (var. Caturra).
Nicaragua
Latin America
Costa Rica