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JXB Advance Access published online on April 28, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany, doi:10.1093/jxb/erp128
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

13C and 15N allocations of two alpine species from early and late snowmelt locations reflect their different growth strategies

Florence Baptist1,*, Guillaume Tcherkez2, Serge Aubert1,4, Jean-Yves Pontailler3, Philippe Choler1,4 and Salvador Nogués3,5

1Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, UMR CNRS-UJF 5553, Université de Grenoble, BP 53, F-38041 Grenoble Cedex 09, France
2Plateforme Métabolisme-Métabolome IFR87, Institut de Biotechnologie des Plantes, Bâtiment 630, Université Paris-Sud XI, 91405 Orsay cedex, France
3Laboratoire Ecologie Systématique Evolution, UMR CNRS-UPS 8079, Université Paris-Sud XI, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
4Station Alpine J. Fourier, CNRS UMS-UJF 2925, Université de Grenoble, F-38041 Grenoble, France
5Departament de Biologia Vegetal, Universitat de Barcelona, 645 Diagonal Av, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: florence.baptist{at}ujf-grenoble.fr

Intense efforts are currently devoted to disentangling the relationships between plant carbon (C) allocation patterns and soil nitrogen (N) availability because of their consequences for growth and more generally for C sequestration. In cold ecosystems, only a few studies have addressed whole-plant C and/or N allocation along natural elevational or topographical gradients. 12C/13C and 14N/15N isotope techniques have been used to elucidate C and N partitioning in two alpine graminoids characterized by contrasted nutrient economies: a slow-growing species, Kobresia myosuroides (KM), and a fast-growing species, Carex foetida (CF), located in early and late snowmelt habitats, respectively, within the alpine tundra (French Alps). CF allocated higher labelling-related 13C content belowground and produced more root biomass. Furthermore, assimilates transferred to the roots were preferentially used for growth rather than respiration and tended to favour N reduction in this compartment. Accordingly, this species had higher 15N uptake efficiency than KM and a higher translocation of reduced 15N to aboveground organs. These results suggest that at the whole-plant level, there is a compromise between N acquisition/reduction and C allocation patterns for optimized growth.

Key words: Alpine plants, 13C and 15N isotope labelling, Carex foetida, Kobresia myosuroides, photosynthesis, respiration, snow cover gradient

Received 28 November 2008; Revised 25 March 2009 Accepted 25 March 2009


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