Gypsum endemics accumulate excess nutrients in leaves as a potential constitutive strategy to grow in grazed extreme soils

Abstract

Extreme soils often have mineral nutrient imbalances compared to plant nutritional requirements and co-occur in open areas where grazers thrive. Thus, plants must respond to both constraints, which can affect nutrient concentrations in all plant organs. Gypsum soil provides an excellent model system to study adaptations to extreme soils under current grazing practices as it harbours two groups of plant species that differ in their tolerance to gypsum soils and foliar composition. However, nutrient concentrations in organs other than leaves, and their individual responses to simulated herbivory, are still unknown in gypsum plants. We studied plant biomass, root mass ratio and nutrient partitioning among different organs (leaves, stems, coarse roots, fine roots) in five gypsum endemics and five generalists cultivated in gypsum and calcareous soils and subjected to different levels of simulated browsing. Gypsum endemics tended to have higher elemental concentration in leaves, stems and coarse roots than generalist species in both soil types, whereas both groups tended to show similar high concentrations in fine roots. This behaviour was especially clear with sulphur (S), which is found in excess in gypsum soils, and which endemics accumulated in leaves as sulphate (>50% of S). Moreover, plants subjected to clipping, regardless of their affinity to gypsum, were unable to compensate for biomass losses and showed similar elemental composition to unclipped plants. The accumulation of excess mineral nutrients by endemic species in aboveground organs may be a constitutive nutritional strategy in extreme soils and is potentially playing an anti-herbivore role in grazed gypsum outcrops.