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Updated: Jan 24, 2026

A Simple Protocol for Mapping the Plant Root System Architecture Traits
Published on: February 10, 2023
Author Correction: Evolutionary history resolves global organization of root functional traits
Zeqing Ma1, Dali Guo1, Xingliang Xu1
1Center for Forest Ecosystem Studies and Qianyanzhou Ecological Station, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
We thank reader Joseph Craine for pointing out three inadvertent errors in this Letter. First, 4 of the 71 divergence dates extracted from ref. 1 of this Amendment and used in Fig. 1b of the original Letter were overestimated. The correct values are 45 million years ago (Ma) for Apocynaceae, 51 Ma for Anacardiaceae, 40 Ma for Primulaceae, and 53 Ma for Amaryllidaceae. These errors had little influence on the overall trend of Fig. 1b (r2 is now 0.48 rather than 0.54, with no change to P < 0.001) and do not change our conclusion and inferences. Second, we neglected to note that since refs. 1 and 2 of this Amendment considered only angiosperms, our Fig. 1b necessarily did not include gymnosperm taxa. The in-text reference to Fig. 1b should therefore read "all major angiosperm plant families in our dataset" rather than "all major vascular plant families in our dataset". Third, in Fig. 1c the trait value of mycorrhizal colonization for Machilus kwangtungensis was erroneously given the value 0.25 instead of 1.0. This error had little influence on the overall Fig. 1c trend, reducing r2 from 0.64 to 0.63 (with no change to P < 0.001).
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