Overlapping leaf economic strategies of evergreen and deciduous woody plants in a seasonally wet tropical forest of the western ghats

Background Leaf economics spectrum (LES) predicts coordinated trade-offs among leaf functional traits associated with resource acquisition and conservation. However, it remains unclear whether evergreen and deciduous leaf habits consistently correspond to these trade-offs in seasonally wet forests. We investigated whether leaf habits align with LES predicted strategies in seasonally wet evergreen forests of the central Western Ghats of India (CWG). We quantified seven key leaf functional traits, viz. leaf area (LA), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf thickness (LTH), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), leaf tissue density (LTD), leaf nitrogen content (Nmass), and carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C/N), across 93 co-occurring woody species (Evergreen = 67; Deciduous = 26). We compared individual traits between phenological groups and examined multivariate separation using the Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA). We also assessed functional richness (FRic), functional dispersion (FDis), functional divergence (FDiv), and sample size-adjusted functional space extent. Results Trait analyses revealed substantial overlap in functional strategies between phenological groups. None of the seven individual traits remained statistically significant after the Holm correction for multiple comparisons. PCoA indicated substantial overlap (45.86%) in multivariate trait space between groups. PERMANOVA detected a statistical significant differences in multivariate trait composition, while PERMDISP also indicated differences in multivariate dispersion, with greater dispersion among deciduous species. FDiv did not differ between groups. Sample size-adjusted analysis indicated that the larger raw evergreen estimates of functional space extent should not be interpreted as evidence of intrinsically broader functional trait space. Conclusions Together, these results suggest that leaf habit alone does not strongly influence leaf functional strategies in seasonally wet forests. Evergreen and deciduous phenologies, therefore, may not correspond to discrete leaf economic strategies under these environmental conditions.