Plant physiological ecology: An essential link for integrating across disciplines and scales in plant ecology

Beyschlag, Wolfram; Ryel, Ronald J.

doi:10.1016/j.flora.2007.05.001

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 169 publications

(147 reference statements)

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“…Ecophysiology seeks to understand how species cope with variations in conditions and resources and how the responses of organisms affect their patterns of distribution and abundance, community structure and ecosystem processes (Beyschlag & Ryel 2007;Lambers et al 2008). A definition of plant ecophysiology illustrate this point: […] address ecological questions about the controls over growth, reproduction, survival, abundance and geographical distributions of plants as these processes are affected by the interactions between plants with their physical, chemical and biotic environment. "…”

Section: What Is Ecophysiology?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Going Back to Basics: Importance of Ecophysiology when Choosing Functional Traits for Studying Communities and Ecosystems

Rosado¹,

Dias²,

Mattos³

2013

NatCon

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Striking progress has been made on conceptual and methodological aspects linking species traits to community and ecosystem responses to environmental change. However, the first step when using a trait-based approach (i.e., choosing the adequate traits reflecting species response to a given environmental driver) deserves much more attention. The first broad comparative studies, using worldwide datasets, have identified a number of traits that are, for example, good indicators of plant responses to water and nutrient availability, or good indicators of plant species defense against herbivory and plant effects on litter decomposition. Due to the successful explanation of global patterns of trait variation and the relatively easy measurements, some functional traits have become widely used. However, it is starting to be questioned whether the status of such "fashionable traits" is always justified; especially considering that particular traits might be the result of underlying traits that respond to distinct environmental factors. Some global trade-offs between traits reflecting contrasting resource use strategies do not hold under changing environmental conditions. Therefore, the choice of traits to up-scale responses of individuals to communities and ecosystems should be based on their adequacy for a specified ecological context. Here, we present a framework that helps identifying objective criteria for the choice of functional traits for studies on community assembly and ecosystem processes and services. This framework comprises five steps: 1) identification of the main environmental drivers; 2) identification of the relevant physiological processes allowing species to cope with the environment; 3) selection of traits that are involved in such physiological processes; 4) validation of the select traits at community level and; 5) evaluation of possible consequences for ecosystem processes/services.

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Section: What Is Ecophysiology?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Going Back to Basics: Importance of Ecophysiology when Choosing Functional Traits for Studying Communities and Ecosystems

Rosado¹,

Dias²,

Mattos³

2013

NatCon

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“…We opted to use physiological ecology techniques to provide mechanistic support for the observed ecological patterns of community and population dynamics (Beyschlag and Ryel 2007). Although Nishimura et al (2010) dealt with shifts in the relative competitive potential between large saplings and adult trees, we opted to study the physiological and morphological characteristics of much younger individuals of the same species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential photosynthetic characteristics between seedlings and saplings of Abies sachalinensis and Picea glehnii, in the field

Bontempo

Hasegawa

Ono

et al. 2012

Ecological Research

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Abies sachalinensis and Picea glehnii are co‐dominant tree species and major components of the forests of Hokkaido, Japan. Recent work suggests that a reversal in potential competitive superiority at different developmental stages could be important to explain their coexistence. Such shifts in competitive advantage can be mechanistically understood by studying the corresponding physiological differences between distinct life stages. Accordingly, our objective was to investigate in the field the photosynthesis of shade‐growing juveniles of these species from two different size‐classes, seedlings and saplings. Our results show that seedlings of both species had higher concentrations of photoprotective xanthophylls than saplings, especially in spring, and suggest that seedlings have a lower threshold of stress tolerance than saplings. Photosynthetic capacity per needle area and lateral shoot extension rate decreased from the seedling to the sapling stage in A. sachalinensis, while in P. glehnii, both increased from the seedling to the sapling stage. Abies sachalinensis had higher photosynthetic rates at the seedling stage but lower rates at the sapling stage than P. glehnii. Nevertheless, A. sachalinensis had a higher lateral shoot extension rate than P. glehnii at both stages. Our physiological results support previous ecological observations that A. sachalinensis is a superior competitor to P. glehnii in the understory, and show that its competitive advantage is higher at the seedling stage than at the sapling stage.

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“…How plant species respond to environmental change depends on their eco‐physiological properties (Beyschlag & Ryel, 2007). Knowledge of species' physiology can improve predictions of mortality (Anderegg et al, 2016), species' distributions (Kearney & Porter, 2009) and ecosystem‐level processes (Verheijen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How plant species respond to environmental change depends on their eco-physiological properties (Beyschlag & Ryel, 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco‐physiological and morphological traits explain alpine plant species' response to warming

et al. 2022

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Climate is changing faster now than it has in the last 2000 years (IPCC, 2021), and ecological communities are being reshuffled as a consequence (Davis & Shaw, 2001;Parmesan & Yohe, 2003).Predicting which types of species are likely to suffer or benefit from changing climate and species interactions is needed for accurate estimates of future community composition and ecosystem function.How plant species respond to environmental change depends on their eco-physiological properties (Beyschlag & Ryel, 2007).

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Plant physiological ecology: An essential link for integrating across disciplines and scales in plant ecology

Cited by 8 publications

References 169 publications

Going Back to Basics: Importance of Ecophysiology when Choosing Functional Traits for Studying Communities and Ecosystems

Going Back to Basics: Importance of Ecophysiology when Choosing Functional Traits for Studying Communities and Ecosystems

Differential photosynthetic characteristics between seedlings and saplings of Abies sachalinensis and Picea glehnii, in the field

Eco‐physiological and morphological traits explain alpine plant species' response to warming

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