上海大金山岛常见木本植物功能性状对生长和死亡的影响

Aims Trait-based methods have provided a new viewpoint for predicting community dynamics. We use these approaches to reveal how functional traits influence the key demographic rates of plant species, thereby improving our understanding of community dynamics. Methods We monitored the growth and mortality rates of 26 common woody plant species from Dajinshan Island, Shanghai, over a five-year period (2016–2021). Nine leaf and wood traits related to competition and utilization strategies for light, water and nutrient resources were measured. Then, the relationships between the relative growth and mortality rates and each of individual trait, as well as the multi-trait synthesized plant economics spectrum, were analyzed. Important findings Our results showed that leaf area and leaf nitrogen content were significantly and positively correlated with the relative growth rate, while leaf thickness, twig wood density and leaf dry matter content were significantly and negatively correlated with the relative growth rate. Stem wood density and twig wood density were significantly negatively correlated with the mortality rate. The plant economics spectrum that is formulated by nine traits, could explain 32.8% variation in relative growth rate; however, it did not correlate with the mortality rate. The relative growth was higher for acquisitive species than that for conservative species. Our results suggest that plant functional traits are important in affecting their growth, and that plant economics spectrum can accurately predict variations in growth rates among species, but its predictions for mortality are weaker.