Key message Enhanced seed production in a mast year suppressed nitrogen allocation to fine roots and leaves of beech trees by decreasing dry matter production and nitrogen concentration, respectively. Abstract It is well known that masting influences the productivity of aboveground vegetative organs, potentially altering carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics in forests. To examine whether masting affects C and N allocation to b...

Aim The consistency of patterns in ontogenetic differences in plant traits across the globe has not been thoroughly studied. Environmental conditions affect leaf functional traits, and these effects can differ between adult trees and saplings due to varying environmental conditions in their aerial and soil environments. Our integrative analysis aims to reveal the global universality of woody plants' ontogeny and explores influ...

Evidence is mounting that plant genome size (GS) is associated with species' ecological strategies for water and nutrient utilisation. However, its role in mediating species' responses to ongoing precipitation changes and increasing nitrogen deposition, and its impact on plant community dynamics, remains poorly understood. Here, combining a precipitation gradient experiment with a nitrogen addition experiment in a semi‐arid gr...

The fundamental trade‐off between current and future reproduction has long been considered to result in a tendency for species that can grow large to begin reproduction at a larger size. Due to the prolonged time required to reach maturity, estimates of tree maturation size remain very rare and we lack a global view on the generality and the shape of this trade‐off. Using seed production from five continents, we estimate tree...

The fraction of net primary productivity (NPP) allocated to belowground organs ( f BNPP ) in grasslands is a critical parameter in global carbon cycle models; moreover, understanding the effect of precipitation changes on this parameter is vital to accurately estimating carbon sequestration in grassland ecosystems. However, how f BNPP responds to temporal precipitation changes along a gradient from extreme drought to extreme w...

Aim Our understanding of the mechanisms that maintain forest diversity under changing climate can benefit from knowledge about traits that are closely linked to fitness. We tested whether the link between traits and seed number and seed size is consistent with two hypotheses, termed the leaf economics spectrum and the plant size syndrome, or whether reproduction represents an independent dimension related to a seed size–seed n...