Termite sensitivity to temperature affects global wood decay rates.

Deadwood is a large global carbon store with its store size partially determined by biotic decay. Microbial wood decay rates are known to respond to changing temperature and precipitation. Termites are also important decomposers in the tropics but are less well studied.

Bridge to the future: Important lessons from 20 years of ecosystem observations made by the OzFlux network.

In 2020, the Australian and New Zealand flux research and monitoring network, OzFlux, celebrated its 20 anniversary by reflecting on the lessons learned through two decades of ecosystem studies on global change biology. OzFlux is a network not only for ecosystem researchers, but also for those 'next users' of the knowledge, information and data that such networks provide. Here, we focus on eight lessons across topics of climate change and variability, disturbance and resilience, drought and heat stress and synergies with remote sensing and modelling.

The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem function.

The leaf economics spectrum and the global spectrum of plant forms and functions revealed fundamental axes of variation in plant traits, which represent different ecological strategies that are shaped by the evolutionary development of plant species. Ecosystem functions depend on environmental conditions and the traits of species that comprise the ecological communities. However, the axes of variation of ecosystem functions are largely unknown, which limits our understanding of how ecosystems respond as a whole to anthropogenic drivers, climate and environmental variability.

The validity of optimal leaf traits modelled on environmental conditions.

The ratio of leaf intercellular to ambient CO (χ) is modulated by stomatal conductance (g ). These quantities link carbon (C) assimilation with transpiration, and along with photosynthetic capacities (V and J ) are required to model terrestrial C uptake. We use optimization criteria based on the growth environment to generate predicted values of photosynthetic and water-use efficiency traits and test these against a unique dataset.

Vessel diameter and related hydraulic traits of 31 Eucalyptus species arrayed along a gradient of water availability.

We present two comprehensive data sets that describe xylem vessel diameters and related sapwood traits for species of Eucalyptus from arid and semi-arid woodlands and forests in Australia. Between 2009 and 2014, sapwood of mature trees was sampled in south-western, south-eastern and eastern Australia. One additional species was sampled from tropical north-western Australia.

The Australian SuperSite Network: A continental, long-term terrestrial ecosystem observatory.

Ecosystem monitoring networks aim to collect data on physical, chemical and biological systems and their interactions that shape the biosphere. Here we introduce the Australian SuperSite Network that, along with complementary facilities of Australia's Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), delivers field infrastructure and diverse, ecosystem-related datasets for use by researchers, educators and policy makers. The SuperSite Network uses infrastructure replicated across research sites in different biomes, to allow comparisons across ecosystems and improve scalability of findings to regional, continental and global scales.

Climate determines vascular traits in the ecologically diverse genus Eucalyptus.

Current theory presumes that natural selection on vascular traits is controlled by a trade-off between efficiency and safety of hydraulic architecture. Hence, traits linked to efficiency, such as vessel diameter, should show biogeographic patterns; but critical tests of these predictions are rare, largely owing to confounding effects of environment, tree size and phylogeny. Using wood sampled from a phylogenetically constrained set of 28 Eucalyptus species, collected from a wide gradient of aridity across Australia, we show that hydraulic architecture reflects adaptive radiation of this genus in response to variation in climate.

Phloem sap and leaf delta13C, carbohydrates, and amino acid concentrations in Eucalyptus globulus change systematically according to flooding and water deficit treatment.

Phloem is a central conduit for the distribution of photoassimilate, nutrients, and signals among plant organs. A revised technique was used to collect phloem sap from small woody plants in order to assess changes in composition induced by water deficit and flooding. Bled phloem sap delta(13)C and sugar concentrations were compared to delta(13)C of bulk material, soluble carbon extracts, and the neutral sugar fraction from leaves.

Plant mitochondria electron partitioning is independent of short-term temperature changes.

We tested the hypotheses that relative activity of the less efficient alternative oxidase (AOX) path changes with diurnal temperature changes, and thus changes carbon use efficiency with temperature. The activities of the alternative and cytochrome oxidase (COX) paths in plant tissues of three species were determined by measuring 18O/16O discrimination and total respiration from 17 to 36 degrees C. A new, more accurate method for calculating oxygen uptake rate from the mass spectrometry data was developed.

Comparison of cellulose extraction methods for analysis of stable-isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen in plant material.

The Jayme-Wise and diglyme-HCl methods for extracting cellulose from plant material for stable-isotope analysis differ considerably in ease of use, with the latter requiring significantly less time and specialized equipment. However, the diglyme-HCl method leaves a small lignin residue in the crude cellulose that may affect stable-isotope values, whereas alpha-cellulose produced by the Jayme-Wise method is relatively pure. We examined whether adding a bleaching step to the diglyme-HCl method could produce cellulose of comparable purity to alpha-cellulose by comparing the yield, percent carbon, and carbon (delta13C) and oxygen (delta18O) stable isotope ratios of the two celluloses.

Growth efficiency increases as relative growth rate increases in shoots and roots of Eucalyptus globulus deprived of nitrogen or treated with salt.

We used calorimetry to test whether there is a single general relationship between growth and respiration in shoots and roots of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. seedlings when stressed, irrespective of the type or severity of stress. We found that nitrogen (N) deprivation and salt treatment had no effect on the relationship between growth and respiration and little effect on absolute rates of respiration.

Application of an enthalpy balance model of the relation between growth and respiration to temperature acclimation of Eucalyptus globulus seedlings.

The enthalpy balance model of growth uses measurements of the rates of heat and CO(2) production to quantify rates of decarboxylation, oxidative phosphorylation and net anabolism. Enthalpy conversion efficiency (eta(H)) and the net rate of conservation of enthalpy in reduced biosynthetic products (R(SG)DeltaH(B)) can be calculated from metabolic heat rate (q) and CO(2) rate (R(CO2)). eta(H) is closely related to carbon conversion efficiency and the efficiency of conservation of available electrons in biosynthetic products.