Inducible phenotypic plasticity in plants regulates aquatic ecosystem functioning

Differences among individuals within species affect community and ecosystem processes in many systems, and may rival the importance of differences between species. Intraspecific variation consists of both plastic and genetic components that are regulated by different processes and operate on different time scales. Therefore, probing which mechanisms can affect traits sufficiently strongly to affect ecosystem processes is fundamental to understanding the consequences of individual variation. We find that a dominant deciduous tree of Pacific Northwest riparian ecosystems, red alder, exhibits strong and synergistic responses to nutrient resources and herbivory stress. These induced responses, which include shifting nutrient and plant secondary metabolite composition, have cascading effects on aquatic ecosystem function. Defense responses suppress leaf litter decomposition in small streams, thus altering the rate of energy capture for one of the most abundant terrestrial carbon sources entering aquatic systems. We find that alder responses to herbivory stress largely depend on availability of soil nutrients, with modification of the highly cytotoxic diarylheptanoid group of secondary metabolites being favored in nutrient-poor environments and modification of the typically dose-dependent ellagitannins being favored in nutrient-rich environments. Importantly, these findings identify traits for herbivore resistance in alder trees and demonstrate that plastic responses occurring within a species and over short time scales substantially alter a key function of an adjacent ecosystem. Furthermore, demonstrating plasticity among alder secondary metabolites lends insight into this system, in which decomposer communities are known to adjust to the secondary chemistry of local alder trees to facilitate rapid decomposition of locally derived leaf litter.