Shifts from an extensive to an intensive root nutrient‐acquisition mode with stand development of three Pinus species

Abstract Plant roots employ diverse strategies to acquire soil nutrients, including direct nutrient uptake through absorptive fine roots and root hairs, scavenging nutrients by forming symbioses with mycorrhizal fungi, and mining nutrients by releasing root exudates. However, whether these three strategies are differently coordinated among phylogenetically closely related tree species and how this coordination shifts with stand development remains largely unclear. To fill these knowledge gaps, we measured 13 root morphological, architectural, physiological and mycorrhizal traits tightly related to nutrient‐acquisition of three Pinus species ( P. sylvestris var. mongolica , P. densiflora and P. tabuliformis ) at young (20‐year‐old) and mature (50‐year‐old) stages planted in nutrient‐impoverished sandy soils, in Northeast China. We found that young trees had thinner absorptive fine roots and a higher specific root length than mature trees across three Pinus species, indicating that roots become morphologically less efficient in ‘do it yourself’ scavenging nutrients during stand development. Moreover, young stands had greater root length density and root area index, and mature stands had faster root‐exudation rates, suggesting that young stands rely more on expanding soil volumes to scavenge nutrients and mature stands depend more on root exudation to ‘mine’ nutrients. The three Pinus species exhibited different nutrient‐acquisition strategies at the mature stage; P. densiflora had higher root length density and root area index, and the other two Pinus species had greater ectomycorrhizal colonization rates. Synthesis . Our findings highlight that phylogenetically closely related tree species may exhibit different nutrient‐acquisition strategies and suggest a shift from an extensive nutrient‐acquisition mode depending more on absorptive fine roots to an intensive nutrient‐acquisition mode relying more on root exudation during stand development.