Functional diversity among grass species: the role of photosynthetic pathway

草种之间的功能多样性：光合途径的作用

• 批准号: NE/I014322/1
• 负责人: Colin Osborne
• 金额: $ 67万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2011 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI014322%2F1
• 关键词: Functional; diversity; among; grass; species

One of the major unresolved problems in contemporary ecology is to understand how diversity arises in plant function. This has important implications for interpreting global patterns of biodiversity and predicting the impacts of climate change. In this application, we propose to investigate the factors responsible for the diversity of growth traits among the world's grass species, addressing the question of why different species grow at different rates, and allocate different amounts of growth to roots vs leaves. We are particularly interested in the role that has been played by evolutionary transitions between the C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways. The C4 pathway is classically thought to boost the growth of plants under hot conditions, in comparison with the C3 type. Photosynthetic pathway is a major axis of variation in plant function that has been invoked to explain significant changes in ecosystem structure in response to past episodes of climate change, the turnover of grass species composition along global climatic gradients, and the ecological sorting of species within regional floras. However, recent work has challenged these long-standing interpretations by demonstrating that ecological adaptation to temperature and drought, and evolutionary history may each play an equally important role in explaining large-scale biogeographical and ecological patterns. In combination with intriguing recent experiments, these new findings raise questions about the extent to which C4 photosynthesis interacts with other plant traits, ecology and evolutionary history to influence plant growth. We will address these major issues by taking a comparative screening approach to investigate the growth traits of ~400 species under a range of environmental conditions. The use of large species samples will allow us, for the first time, to unravel the interacting roles of multiple factors within a unified framework. This approach has been opened up through significant recent conceptual and methodological advances in a number of areas, and represents a major step in the fusion of the fields of ecological and evolutionary informatics.

当代生态学中尚未解决的主要问题之一是了解植物功能的多样性是如何产生的。这对解释全球生物多样性格局和预测气候变化的影响具有重要意义。在这个应用中，我们建议研究导致世界上草物种生长性状多样性的因素，解决为什么不同物种以不同的速度生长的问题，以及为什么不同的生长量分配给根和叶。我们对C3和C4光合作用途径之间的进化转变所起的作用特别感兴趣。与C3类型相比，C4途径通常被认为能促进植物在炎热条件下的生长。光合作用途径是植物功能变化的一个主要轴，它被用来解释生态系统结构在过去气候变化事件中发生的重大变化、草地物种组成沿全球气候梯度的更替以及区域植物区系内物种的生态分选。然而，最近的研究对这些长期存在的解释提出了挑战，表明对温度和干旱的生态适应以及进化史在解释大尺度生物地理和生态模式方面可能都发挥着同样重要的作用。结合最近有趣的实验，这些新发现提出了关于C4光合作用与其他植物性状、生态和进化历史相互作用影响植物生长的程度的问题。为了解决这些主要问题，我们将采用比较筛选的方法来研究约400种植物在不同环境条件下的生长特性。大型物种样本的使用将使我们第一次能够在一个统一的框架内揭示多种因素的相互作用。这种方法是通过最近在许多领域的概念和方法上的重大进展而开辟的，它代表了生态和进化信息学领域融合的重要一步。

项目成果

C 4 photosynthesis and the economic spectra of leaf and root traits independently influence growth rates in grasses

C 4 光合作用以及叶和根性状的经济谱独立影响草的生长速率

• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.13412
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Journal of Ecology
• 影响因子: 5.5
• 作者: Simpson K

C4 photosynthesis boosts growth by altering physiology, allocation and size

• DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2016.38
• 发表时间: 2016-05-01
• 期刊: NATURE PLANTS
• 影响因子: 18
• 作者: Atkinson, Rebecca R. L.;Mockford, Emily J.;Osborne, Colin P.
• 通讯作者: Osborne, Colin P.

Large seeds provide an intrinsic growth advantage that depends on leaf traits and root allocation

大种子提供了内在的生长优势，这取决于叶子性状和根部分配

• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13871
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Functional Ecology
• 影响因子: 5.2
• 作者: Simpson K