Walker, Tom W. N. and Schrodt, Franziska and Allard, Pierre-Marie and Defossez, Emmanuel and Jassey, Vincent E. J. and Schuman, Meredith C. and Alexander, Jake M. and Baines, Oliver and Baldy, Virginie and Bardgett, Richard D. and Capdevila, Pol and Coley, Phyllis D. and van Dam, Nicole M. and David, Bruno and Descombes, Patrice and Endara, María-José and Fernandez, Catherine and Forrister, Dale and Gargallo-Garriga, Albert and Glauser, Gaëtan and Marr, Sue and Neumann, Steffen and Pellissier, Loïc and Peters, Kristian and Rasmann, Sergio and Roessner, Ute and Salguero-Gómez, Roberto and Sardans, Jordi and Weckwerth, Wolfram and Wolfender, Jean-Luc and Peñuelas, Josep (2023) Leaf metabolic traits reveal hidden dimensions of plant form and function. Science Advances, 9 (35): eadi4029. ISSN 2375-2548
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The metabolome is the biochemical basis of plant form and function, but we know little about its macroecological variation across the plant kingdom. Here, we used the plant functional trait concept to interpret leaf metabolome variation among 457 tropical and 339 temperate plant species. Distilling metabolite chemistry into five metabolic functional traits reveals that plants vary on two major axes of leaf metabolic specialization-a leaf chemical defense spectrum and an expression of leaf longevity. Axes are similar for tropical and temperate species, with many trait combinations being viable. However, metabolic traits vary orthogonally to life-history strategies described by widely used functional traits. The metabolome thus expands the functional trait concept by providing additional axes of metabolic specialization for examining plant form and function.