Variation in plant functional traits across contrasting habitats in a seasonally dry tropical forest in the Northern Western Ghats.

Abstract

Functional traits are measurable traits which infers about plant response to different environmental cues. Functional traits are measured at the level of an individual, but give an opportunity to scale up the study to the level of population or communities or ecosystem. Functional trait studies help us to understand community processes like community assembly processes, species distribution pattern etc. This study tried to examine the intra-specific variation of leaf functional traits across the three habitats (open, edge and closed). The next objective was to understand how CWM and FD change across the three habitats and to understand the relative contribution of intra-specific variation and species turn over in the observed variation of CWM and FD. The leaf functional traits of the species studied were significantly different. For the species which were present in more than one habitat, there was considerable intra-specific variation in different habitat pairs. Functional traits at the community level showed better reflection of the environmental gradient than the diversity indices. CWM and FD of LA and LMA varied significantly across open & edge and open and closed habitats whereas the CWMs were not significantly different between edge and closed. The CWM and FD of LDMC was not significant. There was significant contribution of intra-specific variation in the observed variation of CWM and FD across the three habitats. There was a sharp difference in the contribution of intra-specific to inter-specific variation to CWM and FD between different habitat pairs within the community.