plant physiological ecology (lambers et al 2008)

[...]... morphology provided the impetus to investigate the physiological traits of plants from contrasting physical environments (Blackman 1919, Pearsall 1938, Ellenberg 1953, Larcher 1976) H Lambers et al. , Plant Physiological Ecology, Second edition, DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-78341-3_1, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2008 1 2 Although ecophysiologists initially emphasized physiological responses to the abiotic... 3.1.3 Aluminum Resistance 3.2 Calcareous Soils 3.3 Soils with High Levels of Heavy Metals 3.3.1 Why Are the Concentrations of Heavy Metals in Soil High? 3.3.2 Using Plants to Clean or Extract Polluted Water and Soil: Phytoremediation and Phytomining 3.3.3 Why Are Heavy Metals So Toxic to Plants? 3.3.4 Heavy-Metal-Resistant Plants 3.3.5 Biomass Production of Sensitive and Resistant Plants 3.4 Saline... actual distribution of a species (realized niche, as determined by ecological amplitude) is more restricted than the range of conditions Physiological Ecology and the Distribution of Organisms 3 FIGURE 1 Historical, physiological, and biotic filters that determine the species composition of vegetation at a particular site where it can grow and reproduce (its fundamental niche, as determined by physiological. .. detrimental effect of a stress on a plant process This generally occurs over a time scale of seconds to days, resulting in a decline in performance of the process Time Scale of Plant Response to Environment 5 FIGURE 3 Typical time course of plant response to environmental stress The immediate response to environmental stress is a reduction in physiological activity Through acclimation, individual plants... effectively competes with other plants and defends itself against natural enemies (Vrba & Gould 1986) 5 Conceptual and Experimental Approaches Documentation of the correlation between plant traits and environmental conditions is the raw material for many ecophysiological questions Plants in the high alpine of Africa are strikingly similar in morphology and physiology to those of the alpine of tropical South... climate at regional and continental scales (Foley et al 2003, Field et al 2007) As human activities increasingly alter the species composition of large portions of the globe, it is critical that we understand the ecophysiological basis of community, ecosystem, and global processes 7 The Structure of the Book 6 New Directions in Ecophysiology Plant ecophysiology has several new and potentially important... physiology of genetically similar plants grown under different environmental conditions Such experiments show, for example, that plants grown at low temperature generally have a lower optimum temperature for photosynthesis than warm-grown plants (Billings et al 1971) By growing plants collected from alpine and low-elevation habitats under the same environmental conditions, we can demonstrate genetic differences:... and Global Processes: Ecophysiological Controls 1 Introduction 2 Ecosystem Biomass and Production 2.1 Scaling from Plants to Ecosystems 2.2 Physiological Basis of Productivity 2.3 Disturbance and Succession 2.4 Photosynthesis and Absorbed Radiation 2.5 Net Carbon Balance of Ecosystems 2.6 The Global Carbon Cycle 3 Nutrient Cycling 3.1 Vegetation Controls over Nutrient Uptake and Loss 3.2 Vegetation... Ecophysiology? Plant ecophysiology is an experimental science that seeks to describe the physiological mechanisms underlying ecological observations In other words, ecophysiologists, or physiological ecologists, address ecological questions about the controls over the growth, reproduction, survival, abundance, and geographical distribution of plants, as these processes are affected by interactions of plants... boundary layer resistance (ra), stomatal resistance (rs), mesophyll resistance (rm); also radial distance from the root axis; also respiration; also growth rate (in volume) in the Lockhart equation; also proportional root elongation; also intrinsic rate of population increase (e.g., r species) spacing between roots root diameter red radius of a xylem element; also universal gas constant molar abundance ratio . Transport 11 2A. Photosynthesis 11 1 Introduction 11 2 General Characteristics of the Photosynthetic Apparatus 11 2 .1 The ‘‘Light’’ and ‘‘Dark’’ Reactions of Photosynthesis 11 2 .1. 1 Absorption. Environmental Effects on Respiratory Processes 11 9 4 .1 Flooded, Hypoxic, and Anoxic Soils 11 9 4 .1. 1 Inhibition of Aerobic Root Respiration 11 9 4 .1. 2 Fermentation 11 9 4 .1. 3 Cytosolic Acidosis 12 0 4 .1. 4. of Plant Pathogens 13 1 4.9 Leaf Dark Respiration as Affected by Photosynthesis 13 2 5 The Role of Respiration in Plant Carbon Balance 13 2 5 .1 Carbon Balance 13 2 5 .1. 1 Root Respiration 13 2 5 .1. 2