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。这对于解释全球生物多样性模式和预测气候变化的影响具有重要意义。在此应用中，我们建议研究导致世界草种生长性状多样性的因素，解决为什么不同物种以不同速率生长的问题，并将不同的生长量分配给根与叶。我们对 C3 和 C4 光合作用途径之间的进化转变所发挥的作用特别感兴趣。与 C3 类型相比，C4 途径通常被认为可以在炎热条件下促进植物的生长。光合途径是植物功能变异的一个主轴，它被用来解释生态系统结构因过去的气候变化而发生的重大变化、草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类。然而，最近的工作对这些长期存在的解释提出了挑战，证明对温度和干旱的生态适应以及进化历史可能在解释大规模生物地理和生态模式方面发挥着同等重要的作用。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以影响植物生长的程度的问题。我们将通过采用比较筛选方法来研究约 400 个物种在各种环境条件下的生长特性，从而解决这些主要问题。使用大型物种样本将使我们第一次能够在统一的框架内揭示多种因素的相互作用。这种方法是通过许多领域最近概念和方法论的重大进展而开辟的，代表着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