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      Speed versus endurance tradeoff in plants: Leaves with higher photosynthetic rates show stronger seasonal declines

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          Abstract

          We tested for a tradeoff across species between plant maximum photosynthetic rate and the ability to maintain photosynthesis under adverse conditions in the unfavorable season. Such a trade-off would be consistent with the observed trade-off between maximum speed and endurance in athletes and some animals that has been explained by cost-benefit theory. This trend would have importance for the general understanding of leaf design, and would simplify models of annual leaf carbon relations. We tested for such a trade-off using a database analysis across vascular plants and using an experimental approach for 29 cycad species, representing an ancient plant lineage with diversified evergreen leaves. In both tests, a higher photosynthetic rate per mass or per area in the favorable season was associated with a stronger absolute or percent decline in the unfavorable season. We resolved a possible mechanism based on biomechanics and nitrogen allocation; cycads with high leaf toughness (leaf mass per area) and higher investment in leaf construction than in physiological function (C/N ratio) tended to have lower warm season photosynthesis but less depression in the cool season. We propose that this trade-off, consistent with cost-benefit theory, represents a significant physio-phenological constraint on the diversity and seasonal dynamics of photosynthetic rate.

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          From tropics to tundra: global convergence in plant functioning.

          Despite striking differences in climate, soils, and evolutionary history among diverse biomes ranging from tropical and temperate forests to alpine tundra and desert, we found similar interspecific relationships among leaf structure and function and plant growth in all biomes. Our results thus demonstrate convergent evolution and global generality in plant functioning, despite the enormous diversity of plant species and biomes. For 280 plant species from two global data sets, we found that potential carbon gain (photosynthesis) and carbon loss (respiration) increase in similar proportion with decreasing leaf life-span, increasing leaf nitrogen concentration, and increasing leaf surface area-to-mass ratio. Productivity of individual plants and of leaves in vegetation canopies also changes in constant proportion to leaf life-span and surface area-to-mass ratio. These global plant functional relationships have significant implications for global scale modeling of vegetation-atmosphere CO2 exchange.
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            The carbon balance of tropical, temperate and boreal forests

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              Impacts of chilling temperatures on photosynthesis in warm-climate plants

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Sci Rep
                Sci Rep
                Scientific Reports
                Nature Publishing Group
                2045-2322
                10 February 2017
                2017
                : 7
                : 42085
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
                [2 ]Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University , Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
                [3 ]School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine , Orono, ME 04469, USA
                [4 ]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California , 621 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095 1606, USA
                [5 ]Plant Ecophysiology and Evolution Group, State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-bioresources, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University , Nanning, Guangxi 530004, China
                [6 ]National Cycad Germplasm Conservation Center, Fairylake Botanical Garden, Shenzhen and Chinese Academy of Sciences , 160 Xianhu Rd., Liantang, Shenzhen 518004, China
                Author notes
                [*]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                Article
                srep42085
                10.1038/srep42085
                5301202
                28186201
                75f16fc6-d579-42f2-bb2c-35d13e4a8c08
                Copyright © 2017, The Author(s)

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

                History
                : 22 August 2016
                : 04 January 2017
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