Life Sciences Commons^™

Differential Allocation To Photosynthetic And Non-Photosynthetic Nitrogen Fractions Among Native And Invasive Species, Jennifer L. Funk, Lori A. Glenwinkle, Lawren Sack

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Invasive species are expected to cluster on the “high-return” end of the leaf economic spectrum, displaying leaf traits consistent with higher carbon assimilation relative to native species. Intra-leaf nitrogen (N) allocation should support these physiological differences; however, N biochemistry has not been examined in more than a few invasive species. We measured 34 leaf traits including seven leaf N pools for five native and five invasive species from Hawaii under low irradiance to mimic the forest understory environment. We found several trait differences between native and invasive species. In particular, invasive species showed preferential N allocation to metabolism (amino acids) …