Seasonal variations of leaf and canopy properties tracked by ground-based NDVI imagery in a temperate forest

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1267, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01260-y.Changes in plant phenology affect the carbon flux of terrestrial forest ecosystems due to the link between the growing season length and vegetation productivity. Digital camera imagery, which can be acquired frequently, has been used to monitor seasonal and annual changes in forest canopy phenology and track critical phenological events. However, quantitative assessment of the structural and biochemical controls of the phenological patterns in camera images has rarely been done. In this study, we used an NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) camera to monitor daily variations of vegetation reflectance at visible and near-infrared (NIR) bands with high spatial and temporal resolutions, and found that the infrared camera based NDVI (camera-NDVI) agreed well with the leaf expansion process that was measured by independent manual observations at Harvard Forest, Massachusetts, USA. We also measured the seasonality of canopy structural (leaf area index, LAI) and biochemical properties (leaf chlorophyll and nitrogen content). We found significant linear relationships between camera-NDVI and leaf chlorophyll concentration, and between camera-NDVI and leaf nitrogen content, though weaker relationships between camera-NDVI and LAI. Therefore, we recommend ground-based camera-NDVI as a powerful tool for long-term, near surface observations to monitor canopy development and to estimate leaf chlorophyll, nitrogen status, and LAI.This research was supported by US Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research Grant DE-SC0006951, National Science Foundation Grants DBI-959333 and AGS-1005663, and the University of Chicago and the MBL Lillie Research Innovation Award to J.T. and China Scholarship Council (CSC) to H.Y

Metacommunity robustness of plant–fly–wasp tripartite networks with specialization to habitat loss

Recent observations have found plant‐species‐specific fly‐host selection (i.e., specialization) of wasp parasitoids (wasps) in plant–fly–wasp (P–F–W) tripartite networks, yet no study has explored the dynamical implications of such high‐order specialization for the persistence of this network. Here we develop a patch‐dynamic framework for a unique P–F–W tripartite network with specialization observed in eastern Tibetan Plateau and explore its metacommunity robustness to habitat loss. We show that specialization in parasitoidism promotes fly species diversity, while the richness of both plant and wasp decreases. Compared to other two null models, real network structure favors plant species coexistence but increases the extinction risk for both flies and wasps. However, these effects of specialization and network structure would be weakened and ultimately disappear with increasing habitat loss. Interestingly, intermediate levels of habitat loss can maximize the diversity of flies and wasps, while increasing or decreasing habitat loss results in more species losses, supporting intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Finally, we observe that high levels of habitat loss initiate a bottom‐up cascade of species extinction from plants to both flies and wasps, resulting in a rapid collapse of the whole tripartite networks. Overall, this theoretical framework is the first attempt to characterize the dynamics of whole tripartite metacommunities interacting in realistic high‐order ways, offering new insights into complex multipartite networks

Chlorophyll fluorescence tracks seasonal variations of photosynthesis from leaf to canopy in a temperate forest

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Change Biology 23 (2017): 2874-2886, doi: 10.1111/gcb.13590.Accurate estimation of terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) remains a challenge despite its importance in the global carbon cycle. Chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF) has been recently adopted to understand photosynthesis and its response to the environment, particularly with remote sensing data. However, it remains unclear how ChlF and photosynthesis are linked at different spatial scales across the growing season. We examined seasonal relationships between ChlF and photosynthesis at the leaf, canopy, and ecosystem scales, and explored how leaf-level ChlF was linked with canopy-scale solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) in a temperate deciduous forest at Harvard Forest, Massachusetts, USA. Our results show that ChlF captured the seasonal variations of photosynthesis with significant linear relationships between ChlF and photosynthesis across the growing season over different spatial scales (R2=0.73, 0.77 and 0.86 at leaf, canopy and satellite scales, respectively; p<0.0001). We developed a model to estimate GPP from the tower-based measurement of SIF and leaf-level ChlF parameters. The estimation of GPP from this model agreed well with flux tower observations of GPP (R2=0.68; p<0.0001), demonstrating the potential of SIF for modeling GPP. At the leaf scale, we found that leaf Fq’/Fm’, the fraction of absorbed photons that are used for photochemistry for a light adapted measurement from a pulse amplitude modulation fluorometer, was the best leaf fluorescence parameter to correlate with canopy-SIF yield (SIF/APAR, R2=0.79; p<0.0001). We also found that canopy-SIF and SIF-derived GPP (GPPSIF) were strongly correlated to leaf-level biochemistry and canopy structure, including chlorophyll content (R2=0.65 for canopy-GPPSIF and chlorophyll content; p<0.0001), leaf area index (LAI) (R2=0.35 for canopy-GPPSIF and LAI; p<0.0001), and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (R2=0.36 for canopy-GPPSIF and NDVI; p<0.0001). Our results suggest that ChlF can be a powerful tool to track photosynthetic rates at leaf, canopy, and ecosystem scales.This research was supported by U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research Grant DE-SC0006951, National Science Foundation Grants DBI-959333 and AGS-1005663, and the University of Chicago and the MBL Lillie Research Innovation Award to J. Tang, National Science Foundation of China Grants (41671421) to Y. Zhang, and China Scholarship Council (CSC) to H. Yang.2017-12-1

Data from: Parasitoid wasps indirectly suppress seed production by stimulating consumption rates of their seed-feeding hosts

1. In parasitoid–herbivore–plant food chains, parasitoids may be simultaneously linked with both herbivore hosts and plants, as occurs when herbivores attacked by parasitoids continue to consume plants although they are destined to die. This peculiar property may cause parasitoids to confer a differential trophic cascading effect on plants than that known for typical predators. 2. We hypothesized that larval koinobiont parasitoids would confer an immediate negative effect on plant seed production by stimulating consumption of their seed-predator hosts. We tested this hypothesis in an alpine parasitic food chain of plant seeds, pre-dispersal seed predators (tephritid fly larvae) and koinobiont parasitoids using field observations, a field experiment and a microcosm study. 3. We first compared observed seed production in (i) non-infected capitula, (ii) capitula infected only by seed predators (tephritid flies) and (iii) capitula infected by both seed predators and their parasitoids in five Asteraceae species. Consistent with our hypothesis, seed loss in the capitula with both seed predators and parasitoids was significantly greater than in the capitula infested only by seed predators. 4. This effect was replicated in a controlled field experiment focusing on the most common parasitoid–seed predator–plant interaction chain in our system, in which confounding factors (e.g. density and phenology) were excluded. Here, we show that parasitoids indirectly decreased plant seed production by changing the behaviour of seed predators. 5. In a microcosm study, we show that larval parasitoids significantly extended the growth period and increased the terminal size of their host tephritid maggots. Thus, parasitoids suppressed plant seed production by stimulating the growth and consumption of the fly maggots. 6. In contrast to the typical predator-induced trophic cascade, we highlight the significance of parasitoids indirectly decreasing plant fitness by stimulating consumption by seed predators. Future studies on trophic interactions should consider the net effect of both increased consumption by seed predators and their death after development of parasitoids

Leaf emergence in relation to leaf traits in temperate woody species in East-Chinese Quercus fabri forests

To determine the effect of leaf traits on leaf emergence phenology, timing of leaf emergence, leaf expansion rate, durations of leaf emergence and expansion, leaf mass per area (LMA) and leaf size were investigated for 48 woody species from 25 families in two closed Chinese white oak (Quercus fabri) forests of eastern China. Cross-species regression and phylogenetic regression were employed to examine the relationship between leaf phenology and leaf traits. Leaf area, LMA, and leaf expansion rate were found to be significantly greater in canopy trees than in understory shrubs in the oak forests. However, there was no significant difference in timing of leaf emergence and durations of leaf emergence and expansion between canopy and understory species. The large-LMA species leafed out earlier than the species with small LMA. The small-leaved species leafed out earlier than the species with large leaves, but the large-leaved species were greater in leaf expansion rate than their counterparts. Leaf expansion rate was positively correlated with leaf area and timing of leaf emergence, but no significant relationship was found between leaf size and leaf expansion period. These results suggest that large- and small-leaved species possibly employed different strategies to minimize herbivory damage, i.e. early leafing to avoid defoliator damage in small-leaved species and fast expanding and thereby shortening vulnerable time to herbivores in large-leaved species. It could be inferred that the species with small leaves and large-LMA leafed out early in the oak forests, thereby permitting less energy loss than their counterparts under the influence of frost in early spring. In general, early leaf emergence is of significance for high LMA species to increase carbon gain in temperate broad-leaved forests, but it is not related to plant height. Leaf size and leaf expansion period are not necessarily correlated

Figure 3. Pupation time (days after the beginning of the experiment), pupal length, and pupal (fresh) mass of healthy and parasitized tephritid maggots.

The Minimum,first quantile,median,third quantile, Maximum, and mean are provided for each treatment in the microcosm experiment