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Is there any evidence of coordination among leaf, stem and root traits, and thereby of the existence of a plant economics spectrum at the species and community level in Mediterranean forests? Are these traits related to plant size and seed mass?

Mediterranean forests and shrublands, Sierra Morena mountains, Córdoba, southern Spain.

We selected nine woody plant communities along a natural local gradient of soil water and nutrient availability. We measured key leaf, stem, root and whole‐plant traits for 38 dominant woody plant species. The variation across species of 15 functional traits (of the leaf, stem and root) was analysed and coordination among them was tested. We explored the relationships between these traits (hereafter ‘resource‐use traits’ due to their close association with the acquisition–conservation trade‐off) and plant height and seed mass. Finally, we compared …