Letter
Plant Sciences
Mauro Brum, Luciano Pereira, Rafael Vasconcelos Ribeiro, Steven Jansen, Paulo R. L. Bittencourt, Rafael S. Oliveira, Scott R. Saleska
Article
Plant Sciences
Jarmila Pittermann, Alex Baer, Courtney Campany, Steven Jansen, Helen Holmlund, Eric Schuettpelz, Klaus Mehltreter, James E. E. Watkins Jr
Summary: The Cretaceous-Cenozoic expansion of tropical forests created canopy space for diverse epiphytic communities, including Eupolypod ferns. Eupolypods proliferated in this niche, and the transition to the canopy was associated with reduced xylem content and smaller tracheid diameters. However, no differences were found in species vulnerability to embolism and pit membrane thickness. In Eupolypod epiphytes, traits associated with water conservation, such as thicker leaves and lower stomatal density, favored water retention and may have contributed to the radiation in the canopy.
Article
Plant Sciences
Emilie Isasa, Roman Mathias Link, Steven Jansen, Fon Robinson Tezeh, Lucian Kaack, Juliano Sarmento Cabral, Bernhard Schuldt
Summary: The relationship between water potential and vessel diameter is significant, with wider vessels being more vulnerable. Species with thick pit membranes and narrow vessels are more resistant to embolism. This relationship is consistent among species, but not within species.
Article
Plant Sciences
Cora F. Carmesin, Fabian Port, Samuel Boehringer, Kay-Eberhard Gottschalk, Volker Rasche, Steven Jansen
Summary: This study aims to quantify the stiffness of intervessel pit membranes and found that their material stiffness is lower than previously estimated, and it undergoes an irreversible mechanical aging process with increasing growth rings.
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Oskar Franklin, Peter Fransson, Florian Hofhansl, Steven Jansen, Jaideep Joshi
Summary: Forests and vegetation in many parts of the world face water limitations and plants need to avoid hydraulic failure. However, plants take hydraulic risks by operating at water potentials that partially damage their water conduits. This article introduces an eco-evolutionary optimality principle for xylem conduit design which explains this phenomenon based on the idea that conductive efficiency and safety are optimally adapted to the environment. The model explains the relationship between tolerance to negative water potential (psi(50)) and the minimum psi (psi(min)) across different species and within individuals of two species.
Article
Plant Sciences
Claire Fortunel, Clement Stahl, Sabrina Coste, Camille Ziegler, Geraldine Derroire, Sebastien Levionnois, Isabelle Marechaux, Damien Bonal, Bruno Herault, Fabien H. Wagner, Lawren Sack, Jerome Chave, Patrick Heuret, Steven Jansen, Grace John, Christine Scoffoni, Santiago Trueba, Megan K. Bartlett
Summary: Water stress can cause persistent declines in plant function, even after rehydration. Traits characterizing leaf resilience to drought can also predict resilience in whole-plant function. The coordination between resilience and resistance observed globally is also present within ecosystems.
Review
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Stephen Ingram, Steven Jansen, H. Jochen Schenk
Summary: This review article introduces the presence of unique nanobubbles in the xylem of plants and discusses how the polar lipids coating them enable their persistence in a dynamic environment with negative pressure, large pressure fluctuations, and wide temperature fluctuations. The theoretical considerations about the formation of lipid-coated nanobubbles from gas-filled spaces in the xylem and the role of mesoporous fibrous pit membranes in creating the bubbles are also discussed.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Wu-Bing Xu, Wen-Yong Guo, Josep M. Serra-Diaz, Franziska Schrodt, Wolf L. Eiserhardt, Brian J. Enquist, Brian S. Maitner, Cory Merow, Cyrille Violle, Madhur Anand, Michael Belluau, Hans Henrik Bruun, Chaeho Byun, Jane A. Catford, Bruno E. L. Cerabolini, Eduardo Chacon-Madrigal, Daniela Ciccarelli, J. Hans C. Cornelissen, Anh Tuan Dang-Le, Angel de Frutos, Arildo S. Dias, Aelton B. Giroldo, Alvaro G. Gutierrez, Wesley Hattingh, Tianhua He, Peter Hietz, Nate Hough-Snee, Steven Jansen, Jens Kattge, Benjamin Komac, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Koen Kramer, Sandra Lavorel, Christopher H. Lusk, Adam R. Martin, Ke-Ping Ma, Maurizio Mencuccini, Sean T. Michaletz, Vanessa Minden, Akira S. Mori, Uelo Niinemets, Yusuke Onoda, Renske E. Onstein, Josep Penuelas, Valerio D. Pillar, Jan Pisek, Matthew J. Pound, Bjorn J. M. Robroek, Brandon Schamp, Martijn Slot, Miao Sun, Enio E. Sosinski Jr, Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia, Nelson Thiffault, Peter M. van Bodegom, Fons van der Plas, Jingming Zheng, Jens-Christian Svenning, Alejandro Ordonez
Summary: Studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. This study found that larger glacial-interglacial temperature change was associated with lower species replacements and higher richness changes in beta-diversity. Furthermore, regions with large temperature change showed lower phylogenetic and functional turnover and higher nestedness than expected, indicating selective processes during glacial-interglacial oscillations. These findings suggest that future human-driven climate change could lead to local homogenization and reduction in angiosperm tree diversity.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Ana Carolina Petisco-Souza, Fernanda Thiesen Brum, Vinicius Marcilio-Silva, Victor P. Zwiener, Andressa Zanella, Arildo S. Dias, Andres Gonzalez-Melo, Steven Jansen, Guilherme G. Mazzochini, Ulo Niinemets, Valerio D. Pillar, Enio Sosinski, Marcia C. M. Marques, Marcos B. Carlucci
Summary: Biodiversity shortfalls occur due to uneven sampling in time and space, as well as human bias towards certain species. These knowledge gaps can hinder the understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, impacting conservation and restoration efforts. In this study, we investigated the drivers of trait data gaps in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot, focusing on plant functional traits and their association with range size and economic use. Our findings suggest that species with smaller ranges and no economic use have larger trait gaps. Geographically, locations with more species of economic use show lower trait gaps, especially in the eastern Atlantic Forest. This research highlights the need to prioritize sampling efforts for functional traits in certain species and areas to advance conservation and restoration in the Atlantic Forest.
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Chris M. Smith-Martin, Robert Muscarella, William M. Hammond, Steven Jansen, Timothy J. Brodribb, Brendan Choat, Daniel M. Johnson, German Vargas-G, Maria Uriarte
Summary: There is high hydraulic diversity of woody plants in tropical rainforests, which is largely independent of water availability and can influence species growth and ecosystem resilience.
Article
Plant Sciences
Luciano Pereira, Lucian Kaack, Xinyi Guan, Luciano de Melo Silva, Marcela T. Miranda, Gabriel S. Pires, Rafael V. Ribeiro, H. Jochen Schenk, Steven Jansen
Summary: Intervessel pits serve as valves to prevent embolism and optimize transport in xylem. The trade-off between safety and efficiency in hydraulic transport is non-linear, with the intervessel pit area and membrane thickness playing crucial roles, and this trade-off can be adjusted depending on environmental conditions.
Article
Plant Sciences
S. S. Paligi, R. M. Link, E. Isasa, P. Bittencourt, J. S. Cabral, S. Jansen, R. S. Oliveira, L. Pereira, B. Schuldt
Summary: The increasing frequency of global change-type droughts has created a need for fast, accurate and widely applicable techniques for estimating xylem embolism resistance to improve forecasts of future forest changes. This study compared two rapid methods for constructing xylem vulnerability curves and evaluated their agreement and sensitivity to measurement duration. The results highlight the value of the Pneumatron as an easy and reliable tool to estimate embolism thresholds for a wide range of temperate angiosperms.
Article
Forestry
Yang Wei, Ya-Jun Chen, Zafar Siddiq, Jiao-Lin Zhang, Shu-Bin Zhang, Steven Jansen, Kun-Fang Cao
Summary: The water capacitance of trunk sapwood is essential for the physiological function of the canopy, and it is linked to the hydraulic and gas exchange traits of branches.
Article
Forestry
Rodrigo T. Avila, Cade N. Kane, Timothy A. Batz, Christophe Trabi, Fabio M. Damatta, Steven Jansen, Scott A. M. McAdam
Summary: This study investigates the correlation between the relative vessel area of xylem and the resistance to embolism in different species from the genera Acer, Cinnamomum, Ilex, Quercus, and Persea. The results show that a low vessel lumen fraction (VLF) increases the resistance to gas movement and reduces the likelihood of embolism propagation, while a high VLF enhances gas transport and connectivity between conduits. Gas movement rate due to local pressure differences and xylem network connectivity is identified as a central driver of embolism propagation in angiosperm vessels.
Article
Forestry
Dongmei Yang, Luciano Pereira, Guoquan Peng, Rafael Ribeiro, Lucian Kaack, Steven Jansen, Melvin T. Tyree
Summary: The pneumatic method is used to quantify embolism resistance in plant xylem. A modeling approach, the UPPn model, is developed to accurately estimate changes in xylem embolism during dehydration.
