Analyzing anatomy over three dimensions unpacks the differences in mesophyll diffusive area between sun and shade leaves.

Leaves grown at different light intensities exhibit considerable differences in physiology, morphology and anatomy. Because plant leaves develop over three dimensions, analyses of the leaf structure should account for differences in lengths, surfaces, as well as volumes. In this manuscript, we set out to disentangle the mesophyll surface area available for diffusion per leaf area ( ) into underlying one-, two- and three-dimensional components.

Effects of Provenance, Growing Site, and Growth on Wood Anatomy and Density in a 12-Year-Old Provenance Trial.

Vessels are responsible for an efficient and safe water transport in angiosperm xylem. Whereas large vessels efficiently conduct the bulk of water, small vessels might be important under drought stress or after winter when large vessels are embolized. Wood anatomy can adjust to the environment by plastic adaptation, but is also modified by genetic selection, which can be driven by climate or other factors.

Container volume affects drought experiments in grapevines: Insights on xylem anatomy and time of dehydration.

Plant stress experiments are commonly performed with plants grown in containers to better control environmental conditions. Nevertheless, the container can constrain plant growth and development, and this confounding effect is generally ignored, particularly in studies on woody species. Here, we evaluate the effect of the container volume in drought experiments using grapevine as a model plant.

Assessing adaptive and plastic responses in growth and functional traits in a 10-year-old common garden experiment with pedunculate oak ( L.) suggests that directional selection can drive climatic adaptation.

Understanding how tree species will respond to a future climate requires reliable and quantitative estimates of intra-specific variation under current climate conditions. We studied three 10-year-old common garden experiments established across a rainfall and drought gradient planted with nearly 10,000 pedunculate oak ( L.) trees from ten provenances with known family structure.

Difference in reproductive mode rather than ploidy explains niche differentiation in sympatric sexual and apomictic populations of .

Apomicts tend to have larger geographical distributional ranges and to occur in ecologically more extreme environments than their sexual progenitors. However, the expression of apomixis is typically linked to polyploidy. Thus, it is a priori not clear whether intrinsic effects related to the change in the reproductive mode or rather in the ploidy drive ecological differentiation.

Asymmetric reproductive interference: The consequences of cross-pollination on reproductive success in sexual-apomictic populations of (Rosaceae).

Apomixis evolves from a sexual background and usually is linked to polyploidization. Pseudogamous gametophytic apomicts, which require a fertilization to initiate seed development, of various ploidy levels frequently co-occur with their lower-ploid sexual ancestors, but the stability of such mixed populations is affected by reproductive interferences mediated by cross-pollination. Thereby, reproductive success of crosses depends on the difference in ploidy levels of mating partners, that is, on tolerance of deviation from the balanced ratio of maternal versus paternal genomes.