Plasticity of Leaf Anatomy of Two Rain Forest Shrubs in Relation to Photosynthetic Light Acclimation

Abstract

We examined changes in leaf structure and photosynthetic characteristics in two congeneric shrub species growing across natural gap transects in a tropical rain forest. Piper sancti-felicis, a shrub characteristic of disturbed clearings and large gaps, exhibits a high capacity to alter photosynthetic capacity in response to spatial variation in light availability compared to the shade-tolerant species Piper arieianum. Rooted cuttings were placed in pots along transects in each of two recent, naturally formed canopy gaps in old-growth forest. After 13 months of growth, a subsample of 14 plants per species (seven pairs per gap) was chosen for detailed analyses of leaf light environment and photosynthetic light responses (...)