Decomposing leaf mass into photosynthetic and structural components explains divergent patterns of trait variation within and among plant species

Abstract

O_LIAcross the global flora, interspecific variation in photosynthetic and metabolic rates depends more strongly on leaf area than leaf mass. In contrast, intraspecific variation in these rates is strongly mass-dependent. These contrasting patterns suggest that the causes of variation in leaf mass per area (LMA) may be fundamentally different within vs. among species. C_LIO_LIWe developed a statistical modeling framework to decompose LMA into two conceptual components - metabolic LMAm (which determines photosynthetic capacity and dark respiration) and structural LMAs (which determines leaf toughness and potential leaf lifespan) - using leaf trait data from tropical forests in Panama and a global leaf-trait database. C_LIO_LIDecomposing LMA into LMAm and LMAs improves predictions of leaf trait variation (photosynthesis, respiration, and lifespan). We show that strong area-dependence of metabolic traits across species can result from multiple factors, including high LMAs variance and/or a slow increase in photosynthetic capacity with increasing LMAm. In contrast, strong mass-dependence of metabolic traits within species results from LMAm increasing from sunny to shady conditions. LMAm and LMAs were nearly independent of each other in both global and Panama datasets. C_LIO_LISynthesis: Our results suggest that leaf functional variation is multi-dimensional and that biogeochemical models should treat metabolic and structural leaf components separately. C_LI