Journal
PLANT ECOLOGY
Volume 215, Issue 12, Pages 1417-1422Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11258-014-0398-8
Keywords
Forest decline; Tree mortality; Disturbance; Forest health; Plant demography; Tree vigor; Plant aging
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Funding
- University of Missouri Life Sciences Fellowship
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Plant scientists, conservationists, and land managers have expressed a need for more research into causal mechanisms behind whole-plant senescence and mortality, especially where increased rates and incidence of forest decline are projected owing to climate change. However, these disciplines use the terminology of senescence in different ways, and this impedes communication between them. We highlight three common difficulties with senescence terminology as used in the ecological literature and propose some solutions. Specifically, we recommend (1) distinguishing between physiological and demographic senses of the term senescence; (2) discarding the qualifiers exogenous and endogenous as applied to disturbances that can contribute to senescence; and (3) using care in attributing mortality of individual woody perennials to senescence.
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