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Journal ArticleDOI

Resource Availability and Plant Antiherbivore Defense

22 Nov 1985-Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science)-Vol. 230, Iss: 4728, pp 895-899
TL;DR: Resource availability in the environment is proposed as the major determinant of both the amount and type of plant defense, and theories on the evolution of plant defenses are compared with other theories.
Abstract: The degree of herbivory and the effectiveness of defense varies widely among plant species. Resource availability in the environment is proposed as the major determinant of both the amount and type of plant defense. When resource are limited, plants with inherently slow growth are favored over those with fast growth rates; slow rates in turn favor large investments in antiherbivore defenses. Leaf lifetime, also determined by resource availability, affects the relative advantages of defenses with different turnover rates. Relative limitation of different resources also constrains the types of defenses. The proposals are compared with other theories on the evolution of plant defenses.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A conceptual model of the evolution of plant defense is concluded, in which plant physioligical trade-offs interact with the abiotic environment, competition and herbivory.
Abstract: Physiological and ecological constraints play key roles in the evolution of plant growth patterns, especially in relation to defenses against herbivores. Phenotypic and life history theories are unified within the growth-differentiation balance (GDB) framework, forming an integrated system of theories explaining and predicting patterns of plant defense and competitive interactions in ecological and evolutionary time. Plant activity at the cellular level can be classified as growth (cell division and enlargement) of differentiation (chemical and morphological changes leading to cell maturation and specialization). The GDB hypothesis of plant defense is premised upon a physiological trade-off between growth and differentiation processes. The trade-off between growth and defense exists because secondary metabolism and structural reinforcement are physiologically constrained in dividing and enlarging cells, and because they divert resources from the production of new leaf area. Hence the dilemma of plants: Th...

3,843 citations


Cites background from "Resource Availability and Plant Ant..."

  • ...Trade-offs between primary and secondary metabolism are well documented in cell cul- tures (Phillips and Henshaw, 1977; Lindsey and Yeoman, 1983; Collin, 1987) and at the whole plant level....

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  • ...…and Janzen, 1974; Bohm, 1977; Jalal and Collin, 1977; Wiermann, 1981; Lindsey and yeoman, 1983; Hrazdina and Wagner, 1985; Mersey and Cutler, 1986; Collin, 1987; Sakuta and Komanine, 1987; Aerts et al. , 1991 ; Cotton et al., 1991; Kim and Mahlberg, 1991; Koops and Groeneveld, 1991; Lewinsohn,…...

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Book
01 Sep 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the Ecosystem Concept is used to describe the Earth's Climate System and Geology and Soils, and the ecosystem concept is used for managing and sustaining ecosystems.
Abstract: I. CONTEXT * The Ecosystem Concept * Earth's Climate System * Geology and Soils * II. MECHANISMS * Terrestrial Water and Energy Balance * Carbon Input to Terrestrial Ecosystems * Terrestrial Production Processes * Terrestrial Decomposition * Terrestrial Plant Nutrient Use * Terrestrial Nutrient Cycling * Aquatic Carbon and Nutrient Cycling * Trophic Dynamics * Community Effects on Ecosystem Processes * III. PATTERNS * Temporal Dynamics * Landscape Heterogeneity and Ecosystem Dynamics * IV. INTEGRATION * Global Biogeochemical Cycles * Managing and Sustaining Ecosystem * Abbreviations * Glossary * References

3,086 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: The issues of nutrient-limited plant growth and nutrient uptake, with special emphasis on the importance of the uptake of nutrients in organic form—both by mycorrhizal and by non-mycorrhIZal plants—and the influence of symbiotic nitrogen fixation are treated.
Abstract: Publisher Summary In this chapter, the advances that have been made in understanding the ecology of the mineral nutrition of wild plants from terrestrial ecosystems have been reviewed. This chapter is organized along three lines. First, the issues of nutrient-limited plant growth and nutrient uptake, with special emphasis on the importance of the uptake of nutrients in organic form—both by mycorrhizal and by non-mycorrhizal plants—and the importance of symbiotic nitrogen fixation is treated. In addition, the influence of allocation patterns on mineral nutrient uptake is described. Next, a few of the nutritional aspects of leaf functioning and how nutrients are used for biomass production by the plant are explored. That is done by studying the nutrient use efficiency (NUE) of plants and the various components of NUE. Finally, the feedback of plant species to soil nutrient availability by reviewing patterns in litter decomposition and nutrient mineralization is investigated. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of the various aspects of the mineral nutrition of wild plants. The chapter ends with a conceptual description of plant strategies with respect to mineral nutrition.

2,552 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The leaf mass per area–leaf lifespan (LMA-LL) dimension expresses slow turnover of plant parts, long nutrient residence times, and slow response to favorable growth conditions.
Abstract: An important aim of plant ecology is to identify leading dimensions of ecological variation among species and to understand the basis for them. Dimensions that can readily be measured would be especially useful, because they might offer a path towards improved worldwide synthesis across the thousands of field experiments and ecophysiological studies that use just a few species each. Four dimensions are reviewed here. The leaf mass per area-leaf lifespan (LMA-LL) dimension expresses slow turnover of plant parts (at high LMA and long LL), long nutrient residence times, and slow response to favorable growth conditions. The seed mass-seed output (SM-SO) dimension is an important predictor of dispersal to establishment opportunities (seed output) and of establishment success in the face of hazards (seed mass). The LMA-LL and SM-SO dimensions are each underpinned by a single, comprehensible tradeoff, and their consequences are fairly well understood. The leaf size-twig size (LS-TS) spectrum has obvious consequences for the texture of canopies, but the costs and benefits of large versus small leaf and twig size are poorly understood. The height dimension has universally been seen as ecologically important and included in ecological strategy schemes. Nevertheless, height includes several tradeoffs and adaptive elements, which ideally should be treated separately. Each of these four dimensions varies at the scales of climate zones and of site types within landscapes. This variation can be interpreted as adaptation to the physical environment. Each dimension also varies widely among coexisting species. Most likely this within-site variation arises because the ecological opportunities for each species depend strongly on which other species are present, in other words, because the set of species at a site is a stable mixture of strategies.

2,490 citations


Cites background from "Resource Availability and Plant Ant..."

  • ...CSR have not met this need. Rather, species are related by comparing performance or distribution in a landscape where they occur together. For this reason attempted syntheses have been forced back to growth-form, life-form, or habitat categorizations in the attempt to make sense of the accumulated experimental literature (e.g., Connell 1983, Crawley 1983, Goldberg 1996, Goldberg & Barton 1992, Gurevitch et al. 1992, Schoener 1983, Vesk & Westoby 2001, Wilson & Agnew 1992). With this in mind, Westoby (1998) previously suggested a "leaf-height-seed" scheme, with the three dimensions readily quantifiable....

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  • ...Competition from Gross (1984), Bakker (1989), Thompson & Baster (1992), established Reader (1993), Ryser (1993), George & Bazzaz (1999;...

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  • ...divided by (seed mass + accessory costs per seed), where accessory costs include fruit structures, dispersal structures, and early aborted seeds. The influence of these different components on seed output must depend on how widely each varies and on any cross-correlations between them. In Henery & Westoby's (2001) dataset, seed mass varied across three orders of magnitude, but reproductive production varied across only one (even allowing for limited sampling during a single season); hence, seed mass accounted for three fourths of the variation in output....

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  • ...Figure 1 Correlation between leaf lifespan and leaf mass per area across 218 species from several habitats and continents. Regraphed from Reich et al. (1997); data kindly provided by the authors....

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  • ...apparent that high LMA, long leaf lifespan, slow turnover of plant parts, and long nutrient residence times are associated with adaptation to slow-growth situations in a more fundamental way than is slow seedling potRGR (Aerts & van der Peijl 1993, Chapin 1980, Cunningham et al. 1999, Poorter & Gamier 1999). LMA is made up of lamina depth multiplied by tissue density (Witkowski & Lamont 1991). Both components, or measures closely related to them, have been advocated as better indices of plant strategies than LMA. Leaf volume is made up of solid (cell walls), liquid (cell contents), and gas (intercellular space). Roderick et al. (1999a,b, 2000) argued that liquid volume of leaves should be considered fundamental, because the metabolically active components are in liquid phase. Further, because light capture is area-based while gas exchange is volume-based (Charles-Edwards 1978), the surface area-to-volume ratio of leaves should be considered a fundamental descriptor of leaf structure and function. In effect, this argues that leaf thickness is more informative than LMA or SLA. Dry mass/fresh mass (dry matter content) approximates tissue density for leaves with little intercellular space and has been used in several studies (e.g., Ryser 1996, Wright & Westoby 1999). Wilson et al. (1999) found dry matter content more tightly correlated than LMA with a "primary axis of specialization" that Grime et al....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: These results demonstrate convergent evolution and global generality in plant functioning, despite the enormous diversity of plant species and biomes, and have significant implications for global scale modeling of vegetation-atmosphere CO2 exchange.
Abstract: 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.

2,186 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A triangular model based upon the three strategies of evolution in plants may be reconciled with the theory of r- and K-selection, provides an insight into the processes of vegetation succession and dominance, and appears to be capable of extension to fungi and to animals.
Abstract: It is suggested that evolution in plants may be associated with the emergence of three primary strategies, each of which may be identified by reference to a number of characteristics including morphological features, resource allocation, phenology, and response to stress. The competitive strategy prevails in productive, relatively undisturbed vegetation, the stress-tolerant strategy is associated with continuously unproductive conditions, and the ruderal strategy is characteristic of severely disturbed but potentially productive habitats. A triangular model based upon the three strategies may be reconciled with the theory of r- and K-selection, provides an insight into the processes of vegetation succession and dominance, and appears to be capable of extension to fungi and to animals.

4,907 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The nature of crop responses to nutrient stress is reviewed and compares these responses to those of species that have evolved under more natural conditions, particularly in low-nutrient envi­ ronments.
Abstract: Our understanding of plant mineral nutrition comes largely from studies of herbaceous crops that evolved from ruderal species characteristic of nutri­ ent-rich disturbed sites (52). With the development of agriculture, these ancestral species were bred for greater productivity and reproductive output at high nutrient levels where there was little selective advantage in efficient nutrient use. This paper briefly reviews the nature of crop responses to nutrient stress and compares these responses to those of species that have evolved under more natural conditions, particularly in low-nutrient envi­ ronments. I draw primarily upon nutritional studies of nitrogen and phos­ phorus because these elements most commonly limit plant growth and because their role in controlling plant growth and metabolism is most clearly understood (51). Other more specific aspects of nutritional plant ecology not discussed here include ammonium/nitrate nutrition (79), cal­ cicole/calcifuge nutrition (51,88), heavy metal tolerance (4), and serpentine ecology (133).

4,176 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The evidence that N is scarce and perhaps a limiting nutrient for many herbivores, and that in response to this selection pressure, many Herbivores have evolved specific behavioral, morphological, physiological, and other adaptations to cope with and uti­ lize the ambient N levels of their normal haunts is examined.
Abstract: The nitrogen content of a plant is only one of the many plant characteristics that are vitally important to herbivores. However, because of its central role in all metabolic processes as well as in cellular structure and genetic coding, nitrogen is a critical element in the growth of all organisms. Supplementary N often elicits enhanced health, growth, reproduction, and survival in many organisms. This suggests that N is a limiting factor. Since N makes up a large portion of the earth's atmosphere (about 78%), the problem is not an absolute but a relative shortage-that is, a scarcity of usable or metaboliza­ ble N during critical growth periods (159, 328). Plants encounter shortages of inorganic nitrogen (nitrate and/or ammonium ions); animals experience shortages of organic nitrogen (specific proteins and/or amino acids). This article reviews and examines the evidence (a) that N is scarce and perhaps a limiting nutrient for many herbivores, and (b) that in response to this selection pressure, many herbivores have evolved specific behavioral, morphological, physiological, and other adaptations to cope with and uti­ lize the ambient N levels of their normal haunts. McNeill & Southwood (201) and White (328) have also reviewed these general questions. There­ fore, this review explores additional evidence and further develops the fundamental arguments. The review is organized into three major divisions. The first focuses on important sources of variation in plant N (seasonal and ontogenetic trends, different tissues and species, etc) because such variation may be the basis

3,251 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 May 1983-Oikos
TL;DR: Fundamental differences between the response of woody plants and graminoids to vertebrate herbivory suggest that the dynamics of browsing systems and grazing systems are qualitatively different.
Abstract: The evolutionary response of plants to herbivory is constrained by the availability of resources in the environment. Woody plants adapted to low-resource environments have intrinsically slow growth rates that limit their capacity to grow rapidly beyond the reach of most browsing mammals. Their low capacity to acquire resources limits their potential for compensatory growth which would otherwise enable them to replace tissue destroyed by browsing. Plants adapted to low-resource environments have responded to browsing by evolving strong constitutive defenses with relatively low ontogenetic plasticity. Because nutrients are often more limiting than light in boreal forests, slowly growing boreal forest trees utilize carbon-based rather than nitrogen-based defenses. More rapidly growing shade-intolerant trees that are adapted to growth in high-resource environments are selected for competitive ability and can grow rapidly beyond the range of most browsing mammals. Moreover, these plants have the carbon and nutrient reserves necessary to replace tissue lost to browsing through compensatory growth. However, because browsing of juvenile plants reduces vertical growth and thus competitive ability, these plants are selected for resistance to browsing during the juvenile growth phase. Consequently, early successional boreal forest trees have responded to browsing by evolving strong defenses during juvenility only. Because severe pruning causes woody plants to revert to a juvenile form, resistance of woody plants to hares increases after severe hare browsing as occurs during hare population outbreaks. This increase in browsing resistance may play a significant role in boreal forest plant-hare interactions. Unlike woody plants, graminoids retain large reserves of carbon and nutrients below ground in both low-resource and high-resource environments and can respond to severe grazing through compensatory growth. These fundamental differences between the response of woody plants and graminoids to vertebrate herbivory suggest that the dynamics of browsing systems and grazing systems are qualitatively different.

2,439 citations