Effects of habitat MAP and MAT on leaf-level traits of
C4 grasses
We investigated the relationship of leaf-level traits, affecting
gm and Kleaf and hence photosynthetic
C-gain and transpirational water-loss respectively, with two main
habitat climate variables- mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual
precipitation (MAP). Anatomical traits associated with
gm and Kleaf that were measured in
current study are shown in Fig. S1. Mean values along with SE for the
leaf-level traits measured in the current study are given in Table S2
and Pathare et al ., 2020. Mean values along with SE for MAP and
MAT are shown in Fig. S9. None of the measured photosynthetic C-gain or
transpirational water-loss traits measured in current study related with
MAT (Table 1). However, MAP showed a significant relationship with many
important leaf-level traits associated with photosynthetic C-gain or
transpirational water-loss (Table 1, Fig. S5, S6 and S7). Specifically,
there was a significant negative relationship between MAP and
Smes (R 2 = -0.50, P< 0.01), Sc (R 2 =
-0.60, P < 0.001), SDada(R 2 = -0.20, P = 0.06), SR
(R 2 = -0.21, P = 0.05),
gmax (R 2 = -0.24, P =
0.04), gmax-ada (R 2 = -0.43,P = 0.003), Narea (R 2 =
-0.21, P = 0.05), leaf thickness (R 2 =
-0.35, P = 0.037), average VED (R 2 =
-0.45, P = 0.01), VEDada(R 2 = -0.45, P = 0.01) and
BSCW (R 2 = -0.39, P =
0.021). Whereas, there was a significant positive relationship between
BSias and MAP (R 2 = 0.27,P = 0.026). We also investigated the relationship of functional
traits like gm and gsw with MAP for the
18 C4 grasses. There was no significant relationship
between gsw and MAP (Table 1). However, there was a
strong negative relationship between gm and MAP
(R 2 = -0.43, P = 0.015), whereas
Kleaf showed a marginally significant positive
relationship with MAP (R 2 = 0.20, P =
0.07, Table 1).