The ontogenetic dimension of plant functional ecology

Abstract Plant functional strategies change considerably as plants develop, driven by intraindividual variability in anatomical, morphological, physiological and architectural traits. Developmental trait variation arises through the complex interplay among genetically regulated phase change (i.e. ontogeny), increases in plant age and size, and phenotypic plasticity to changing environmental conditions. Although spatial drivers of intraspecific trait variation have received extensive research attention, developmentally driven intraspecific trait variation is largely overlooked, despite widespread occurrence. Ontogenetic trait variation is genetically regulated, leads to dramatic changes in plant phenotypes and evolves in response to predictable changes in environmental conditions as plants develop. Evidence has accumulated to support a general shift from fast to slow relative growth rates and from shade to sun leaves as plants develop from the highly competitive but shady juvenile niche to the stressful adult niche in the systems studied to date. Nonetheless, there are major gaps in our knowledge due to examination of only a few environmental factors selecting for the evolution of ontogenetic trajectories, variability in how ontogeny is assigned, biogeographic sampling biases on trees in temperate biomes, dependencies on a few broadly sampled leaf morphological traits and a lack of longitudinal studies that track ontogeny within individuals. Filling these gaps will enhance our understanding of plant functional ecology and provide a framework for predicting the effects of global change threats that target specific ontogenetic stages. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.