I have studied an area of rain forest which presents a strong gradient of variation in soil moisture and nutrient, established in a short distance (150 - 200 meters). After the florestal inventory were detected three distinct plants communities, varying strongly across the environmental gradient - 1) A floodable plain forest in a organic soil; 2) Intermediary assembly located in a soil with a steep slope; and 3) a dry forest located in the highest place, with poor white sand soil.
For now, i intend to investigate anatomical and functional traits, searching for common patterns that could explain the establishment of these plant assemblies.
Greetings
Try please to investigate the soil profile, including soil texture, bulk density , aggregate stability, at different depth 25. 50 and 75 cm using an auger for sampling. pls do organic matter analysis as well as macr and micro elements tests.
You could look at fruit dispersal syndrome of the different species involved. Seed germination preferences could also be gleaned from literature or you could run experiments. Root physiology or mycorrhyzal associations could also be very telling, especially in waterlogged soil.
You may also want to test the variability is available soil moisture during the growth period in different species or in functional groups of species and compare it with variability in the crown and foliar evapotranspiration pressure. This would also implement the analysis of micro-elements both in the soil and the foliage.
If you're doing soil profiles, analyzing root length and biopore densities in different dephts (also the share of roots growing inside/outside of biopores, especially if you link the distribution to bulk densities), could be interesting!
If the gradient is strong enough in your system, you should be able to find a zonation of some plant functional and anatomical traits. In that case, I would look for different growth rates, contrasting production and/or presence of fleshy tissues and leaf-structures, contrasting production of below-ground structures, presence of water storage structures.. However, independently of whatever you may find, you will have to have in mind conducting experiments to determine whether the correlation between soil characteristics and plant traits have a cause-effect association. Correlation does not imply causation per se. So, the finding of a given pattern won´t "explain" the causes that regulate the establishment of the species you find; it only will give you a clue about it. It will help you to design a better experiment.
Good luck!
As per Alejandro Bortolus, if you are looking for plant anatomical traits I would start with ring width (variability in early/latewood if it is distinguishable in the taxa you have). The problem you will have is comparability. If there are distinct plant communities for each of your environmental gradients what anatomical differences/similarities are you looking for? Each taxa will be different so, are there any overlapping taxa that appear in each of the environmental gradients so you can compare variations in the structural anatomy of one or more taxa? If there are no overlapping taxa then do different gradients contain more ring-porous or diffuse porous taxa than others might be another way of investigating this.
there are some options on traits: specific leaf area, branch wood density and anatomy, specific root length of fine root, structural index for crown etc. just find a good question and then decide what traits you need to measure
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