Plant Allocation, Growth Rate and Successional Status

Theory predicts a negative correlation between root (and stem) allocation and growth rate in enriched environments (RGR max ), but evidence does not consistently support this. There is one possible supporting example from previous research in which root allocation in the field increases during old-field succession at the Cedar Creek Natural History Area, both community wide and for individual species samples, and RGR max declines for some important species. In this study, we confirm that late successional species have lower RGR max for a larger sample of species (n = 28) as well as higher field root allocation. However, root allocation by seedlings does not increase for the late successional species for those same species in the greenhouse in enriched conditions, indeed it declines