Abstract: Plant traits arise due to evolutionary and environmental drivers operating across different spatial and temporal scales. Significant progress has been made in understanding the relationships between above- and belowground traits in terrestrial plants. However, little is known about the performance of these traits, as well as the clonal architecture and resource acquisition strategy of clonal plants on a large scale in marsh wetlands. In this study, we measured the above- and belowground traits of 15 commonly occurring clonal plant species and soil physicochemical properties, and obtained climatic data across nine marsh wetlands in northern China. We identified synergistic or trade-off relationships among the soil nutrients, interactions between precipitation and humidity, as well as, the crucial role of soil moisture levels in shaping wetland clonal plant traits. Plant traits exhibited superior performance under higher soil moisture conditions, but this trend was reversed in high-precipitation regions. Most wetland clonal plants followed acquisitive strategy, and under higher soil moisture conditions, belowground traits tended to exhibit a guerrilla clonal architecture. Our study improves our understanding of the ecological strategies used by wetland clonal plants under heterogeneous moisture conditions. Importantly, it provides crucial insights that will help restore and conserve wetlands in arid and semi-arid regions of northern China.

Key words: clonal plant, ecological strategy, marsh wetland, plant trait, soil moisture