Huixing Kang, Yuan Yu, Xinran Ke, Hajime Tomimatsu, Dongliang Xiong, Louis Santiago, Qingmin Han, Reki Kardiman, Yanhong Tang
It has long been held that tree species/leaves from shaded environments show faster rate of photosynthetic induction than species/leaves from sunlit environments, but the evidence so far is conflicting and the underlying mechanisms are still under debate. To address the debate, we compiled a dataset for 87 tree species and compared the initial increasing slope during the first 2-min induction (SA) and stomatal and biochemical characteristics between sun and shade species from the same study, and those between sun and shade leaves within the same species. In 77% of between-species comparisons, the species with high steady-state photosynthetic rate in the high light (Af) exhibited a larger SA than the species with low Af. In 67% within-species comparisons, the sun leaves exhibited a larger SA than the shade leaves. However, in only a few instances did the sun species/leaves more rapidly achieve 50% of full induction, with an even smaller SA, than the shade species/leaves. At both the species and leaf level, SA increased with increasing initial stomatal conductance before induction (gsi). Despite exhibiting reduced intrinsic water-use efficiency in low light, a large SA proportionally enhances photosynthetic carbon gain during the first 2-min induction in the sun species and leaves. Thus, in terms of the increase in absolute rate of photosynthesis, tree species/leaves from sunlit environments display faster photosynthetic induction responses than those from shaded environments. Our results call for re-consideration of contrasting photosynthetic strategies in photosynthetic adaption/acclimation to dynamic light environments across species. © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350117, China; Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China; College of Environment and Safety Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fujian, Fuzhou, 350108, China; Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan; College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Hubei, Wuhan, 430070, China; Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, 2150 Batchelor Hall, Riverside, 92521-0124, CA, United States; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843, Balboa, 03092, Panama; Department of Plant Ecology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI), 1 Matsunosato, Ibaraki, Tsukuba, 305-8687, Japan; Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematic and Natural Science, Universitas Negeri Padang, West Sumatra, 35171, Indonesia
