Trait-based approaches in community ecology have heavily focused on aboveground traits, particularly leaf traits responsible for photosynthesis, while often overlooking root traits despite their importance in understanding individual performance, population dynamics, and community assembly. However, recent efforts to integrate root trait data have revealed syndromes within their trait space. This further underscores the importance of clarifying associations between aboveground and belowground traits to better understand plant strategies and accurately predict community responses to environmental changes.
Two recent global analyses on the aboveground and belowground traits have presented differing perspectives on the linkage in resource acquisition strategies between aboveground and belowground. One study suggested that resource acquisition strategies operate independently aboveground and belowground, whereas another indicated a strong connection between them. Furthermore, it remains unclear how strategies beyond resource acquisition are linked between aboveground and belowground. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the associations between leaf and root traits related to resource acquisition, defense, and decomposition in approximately 130 plant species co-occurring in a semi-natural grassland in Sugadaira, Nagano.
Overall, the leaf and root traits measured in this study were generally correlated. Species with acquisitive leaf traits tended to exhibit acquisitive root traits. Similarly, species with higher concentrations of phenolics or lignin in their leaves also tended to have higher concentrations in their roots. Thus, our findings suggest that strategies related to resource acquisition, defense, and decomposition are generally consistent between aboveground and belowground traits in the studied plant community.