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The leaf economic spectrum (LES) has been repeatedly verified with regional and global datasets. However, the LES of desert plants and its drivers has not been fully explored at the species level. In this study, we sampled three desert perennial plant species (Alhagi sparsifolia, Karelinia caspia, and Apocynum venetum) at three different geographical areas of distribution in Xinjiang, China, and measured 10 leaf economic traits to determine their strategy of resource utilization. The scores of the first axis from the principal component analysis of 10 leaf economic traits as a continuous variable define the LES. This study showed that the LES did exist in desert plants in this region. The leaf economic spectrum shifted from a more conservative strategy to a more acquisitive strategy with increasing contents of soil potassium (K) and the ratio of K to phosphorus. Except for the vein density of A. venetum, which quadratically correlated with LES, the vein density, distance between veins, and vein loopiness significantly positively correlated with the LES (p < 0.05), indicating a covariation and tradeoff relationship. The annual mean temperature was significantly negatively correlated with LES, while the annual mean precipitation (MAP) and the aridity index (AI), which was calculated by the ratio of MAP to potential evapotranspiration, significantly positively correlated with the LES. Of these, vein loopiness and AI were more effective at predicting the change in LES from anatomical and climatic perspectives owing to their high regression coefficients (R2). The findings of this study will substantially improve the understanding of the strategies of desert plants to utilize resources and predict the structure and function of ecosystems.

The data set contains images of leaf venation networks obtained from tree species in Malaysian Borneo. The data set contains 726 leaves from 295 species comprising 50families, sampled from eight forest plots in Sabah. Image extents are approximately 1 × 1cm, or 50 megapixels. All images contain a region of interest in which all veins have been hand traced. The complete data set includes over 30 billion pixels, of which more than 600 million have been validated by hand tracing. These images are suitable for morphological characterization of these species, as well as for training of machine-learning algorithms that segment biological networks from images. Data are made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License. You are free to copy, distribute, and use the database; to produce works from the database; and to modify, transform, and build upon the database. You must attribute any public use of the database, or works produced from the database, in the manner specified in the license. For any use or redistribution of the database, or works produced from it, youmust make clear to others the license of the database and keep intact any notices on the original database.

The data set contains images of leaf venation networks obtained from tree species in Malaysian Borneo. The data set contains 726 leaves from 295 species comprising 50 families, sampled from eight forest plots in Sabah. Image extents are approximately 1 × 1 cm, or 50 megapixels. All images contain a region of interest in which all veins have been hand traced. The complete data set includes over 30 billion pixels, of which more than 600 million have been validated by hand tracing. These images are suitable for morphological characterization of these species, as well as for training of machine‐learning algorithms that segment biological networks from images. Data are made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License. You are free to copy, distribute, and use the database; to produce works from the database; and to modify, transform, and build upon the database. You must attribute any public use of the database, or works produced from the database, in the manner specified in the license. For any use or redistribution of the database, or works produced from it, you must make clear to others the license of the database and keep intact any notices on the original database.

Leaves of vascular plants use specific tissues to irrigate the lamina (veins) and to regulate water loss (stomata), to approach homeostasis in leaf hydration during photosynthesis. As both tissues come with attendant costs, it would be expected that the synthesis and spacing of leaf veins and stomata should be coordinated in a way that maximizes benefit to the plant. We propose an innovative geoprocessing method based on image editing and a geographic information system to study the quantitative relationships between vein and stomatal spatial patterns on leaves collected from 31 angiosperm species from different biomes. The number of stomata within each areole was linearly related to the length of the looping vein contour. As a consequence of the presence of free-ending veinlets, the minimum mean distance of stomata from the nearest veins was invariant with areole size in most of the species, and species with smaller distances carried a higher density of stomata. Uniformity of spatial patterning was consistent within leaves and species. Our results demonstrate the existence of an optimal spatial organization of veins and stomata, and suggest their interplay as a key feature for achieving a constant mesophyll hydraulic resistance throughout the leaf.