ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1562363
This article is part of the Research TopicVegetation Resilience in Ecological Autocatalysis under Climate ChangeView all 7 articles
Allocation strategy of nonstructural carbohydrates in Spiraea L. across different grassland types in the Altai Mountains
Provisionally accepted
Xuexi Ma1
Meiniu Yang2
Lianlian FAN2
jiangyue li2Meng Yan1Ziyue Yang1
Chen Xi2Bo Zhang1
Yaoming Li2*
Gao Yingzhi1- 1Xinjiang Agricultural University, Ürümqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Region, China
- 2Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ürümqi, China
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Global climate change and overgrazing have exacerbated shrub encroachment in arid and semi-arid grasslands and risking the stability and multifunctionality of grassland ecosystems. This shift between shrub and grassland raises a great concern to explicitly analyse the distribution of shrubs into arid and semi-arid grasslands and related environmental adaptation by using their nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) concentrations, and assess their allocation strategies and key determinants of these strategies. . This research study was conducted in the Altai mountains of northwest of China and specifically focused on Spiraea, a dominant shrub in this region, and analyzed the NSCs component concentrations and their allocation in Spiraea leaves across different grassland types. The results showed significant variations in the NSCs concentrations, components, and allocation in Spiraea leaves across various grassland types, demonstrating higher overall values in meadows rather than grasslands (p < 0.05). Moreover, the total NSCs concentrations(the sum of soluble sugar and starch concentrations, and the ratio of soluble sugar to starch) exhibited consistent responses to environmental changes, and indicated increasing trends with elevation, soil water content (SWC), and soil total nitrogen concentrations (TN), while decreasing with mean annual temperature (MAT). Notably, MAT and SWC were emerged as the factors with the highest influence on NSCs concentrations and allocation in Spiraea leaves. These findings indicate that Spiraea in the Altai mountains can rapidly adapt to environmental changes across different grassland types by calibrating their NSCs concentrations and composition. These findings also present an insightful theoretical foundation for managing shrub-grassland encroachments in the Altai mountains region and other arid and semi-arid regions.
Keywords: Grassland shrub encroachment, Altai Mountains, Nonstructural carbohydrates, soluble sugars, Starch
Received: 17 Jan 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Yang, FAN, li, Yan, Yang, Xi, Zhang, Li and Yingzhi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yaoming Li, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ürümqi, China
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