Water loss in plants has commonly been considered only as a cost of photosynthetic carbon gain. However, plants may use water in ways that may not necessarily optimize instantaneous carbon gain, but instead as a strategy for leaf evaporative cooling. The DPEL and collaborators aim to assess whether plant water use is not always a side-effect of carbon gain, but rather an active strategy to optimize leaf temperature to cope with thermal stress that is becoming more common with climate change.
Selected recent publications:
PoschBC, Amoanimaa-Dede H, Aparecido LMT, AtkinOK, Bison NN, Blonder
BW, Coast C, Doughty CE, Guo JS, van Haren J, Michaletz ST, Moran ME, Scafaro AP, Slot M, Wiebe W, Winter K, Zhu L, Zorger B, Hultine KR. Tansley Review – Current perspectives on Photosystem II acclimation to high temperature in land plants. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70661.
Posch BP, Bush SE, Koepke DF, Schuessler A, Andregg LLD, Aparecido LML, Blonder BW, Guo JS, Kerr KL, Moran M E, Cooper HF, Doughty CE, Gehring CA, Whitham TG, Allan GJ, Hultine KR. 2024. Intensive leaf cooling promotes tree survival during a record heatwave. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 121: e2408583121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2408583121.
Moran ME, Aparecido LMT, Koepke DF, Cooper HF, Doughty CE, Gehring CA, Throop HL, Whitham TG, Allan GJ, Hultine KR. 2023. Limits to thermal and hydrological tolerance in a foundation species (Populus fremontii) in the desert southwestern United States. New Phytologist 240: 2298-2311. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19247.
Blonder BW, Aparecido LMT, Hultine KR, Lombardozzi D, Michaletz ST, Posch BC, Slot M, Winter K. 2023. Plant water use theory should incorporate hypotheses about extreme environments, population ecology, and community ecology. New Phytologist 238: 2271-2283. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18800.
Recent funding sources:
National Science Foundation, Integrative Organismal Systems (Award # IOS-2140427)
National Science Foundation, MacroSystems Biology (Award # 1340856)
