“…However, the coupling relation of these functional traits in the subtropical regions might be quite different, since the evergreen trees tend to invest more N in the durable leaves that can persist through disturbances (Pringle et al., 2011). In a pot experiment, the strong decoupling between foliage hydraulic traits and photosynthesis in evergreen species was evident, but not in deciduous species (Z. Zhang, Wu, et al., 2019; Z. Zhang, Zhao, et al., 2019). Besides, since P was limited in the subtropical forests, the fertilization effects on the photosynthesis might also be counteracted due to the imbalanced stoichiometry (Huang et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2018; Lu et al., 2018), which weakens the decoupling relations (Jiang et al., 2019; F. Zhu et al., 2014).…”