Nitrogen uptake strategies of edaphically specialized Bornean tree species |
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Authors: | Sabrina E. Russo Amy Kochsiek Jocelyn Olney Lauren Thompson Amy E. Miller Sylvester Tan |
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Affiliation: | 1. School of Biological Sciences, Manter Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0118, USA 3. Center for Tropical Forest Science, Arnold Arboretum Asia Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA 2. Southwest Alaska Network, U.S. National Park Service, Anchorage, AK, 99501, USA
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Abstract: | The association of tree species with particular soil types contributes to high β diversity in forests, but the mechanisms producing such distributions are still debated. Soil nitrogen (N) often limits growth and occurs in differentially available chemical forms. In a Bornean forest where tree species composition changes dramatically along a soil gradient varying in supplies of different N-forms, we investigated whether tree species’ N-uptake and soil specialization strategies covaried. We analyzed foliar 15N natural abundance for a total of 216 tree species on clay or sandy loam (the soils at the gradient’s extremes) and conducted a 15N-tracer experiment with nine specialist and generalist species to test whether species displayed flexible or differential uptake of ammonium and nitrate. Despite variation in ammonium and nitrate supplies and nearly 4 ‰ difference in foliar δ15N between most soil specialists and populations of generalists on these soils, our 15N tracer experiment showed little support for the hypothesis that soil specialists vary in N-form use or the ratios in which they use these forms. Instead, our results indicate that these species possess flexible capacities to take up different inorganic N forms. Variation between soil specialists in uptake of different N forms is thus unlikely to cause the soil associations of tree species and high β diversity characteristic of this Bornean rain forest. Flexible uptake strategies would facilitate N-acquisition when supply rates of N-forms exhibit spatiotemporal variation and suggest that these species may be functionally redundant in their responses to N gradients and influences on ecosystem N-cycles. |
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