Aim: The variations of leaf and root traits in communities are associated with above- and below-ground resource exploitation strategies and are used to infer community assembly processes along environmental gradients. However, little is known about variations in leaf and root traits and their drivers along elevations in mountain forests.

Location: Yulong Mountain, southeastern Hengduan Mountains, Southwest China.

Taxon: Seed plants

Methods: We measured six leaf traits and seven root traits across 47 woody species and collected environmental variables from forest plots along a 1,200 m elevational gradient. We employed linear mixed models to examine how resource exploitation strategies (community weighted mean, CWM) and functional diversity (standardized effect size of RaoQ, SES.RaoQ) associated with leaf and root traits varied along elevations. Furthermore, we determined the relative effects of environmental variables on these metrics.

Results: We observed that the resource exploitation strategy of leaves shifted from an acquisitive to a conservative strategy (higher leaf carbon concentration) with increasing elevation. Conversely, root trait variation exhibited an opposite trend, shifting from a conservative to an acquisitive strategy (higher root branching intensity but lower root diameter and root tissue density) along elevations, potentially influenced by mycorrhizal interactions. We detected functional convergence for leaf and root traits across elevations, with a greater degree of functional convergence at high elevations. Leaf trait convergence was closely linked to soil nitrogen conditions, while root trait convergence was associated with soil organic carbon levels.

Main Conclusions: Our results highlight that the patterns of resource exploitation strategies along elevational gradients are decoupled for leaf and root traits, with distinct environmental factors shaping the convergence of root and leaf traits. We argue that forest communities in mountain ecosystems may modify their resource exploitation strategies and functional diversity through varying combinations of leaf and root traits to improve resilience to future global change.