Different dry-wet pulses favor different functional strategies: A test using tropical dry forest tree species.

ABSTRACT: In many terrestrial habitats, plants experience temporal heterogeneity in water availability both at the intra and inter annual scales, creating dry-wet pulse scenarios. This variability imposes two concomitant challenges for plants: surviving droughts and efficiently utilizing water when it becomes available, whose responses are closely interconnected. To date, most studies have focused on the response to drought following static designs that do not consider consequences of repeated transitions from one state to the other. In principle, different dry-wet pulse scenarios among years may differentially affect species performance, plant strategies, and promote coexistence through temporal niche separation. We predicted that short frequent droughts would disfavor drought-avoidant species, as

SUBMITTER: Vega-Ramos F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11614228 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature