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Short-term temperature response curves of leaf dark respiration (R-T) provide insights into a critical process that influences plant net carbon exchange. This includes how respiratory traits acclimate to sustained changes in the environment. Our study analysed 860 high-resolution R-T (10-70°C range) curves for: (a) 62 evergreen species measured in two contrasting seasons across several field sites/biomes; and (b) 21 species (subset of those sampled in the field) grown in glasshouses at 20°C : 15°C, 25°C : 20°C and 30°C : 25°C, day : night. In the field, across all sites/seasons, variations in R 25 (measured at 25°C) and the leaf T where R reached its maximum (T max ) were explained by growth T (mean air-T of 30-d before measurement), solar irradiance and vapour pressure deficit, with growth T having the strongest influence. R 25 decreased and T max increased with rising growth T across all sites and seasons with the single exception of winter at the cool-temperate rainforest site where irradiance was low. The glasshouse study confirmed that R 25 and T max thermally acclimated. Collectively, the results suggest: (1) thermal acclimation of leaf R is common in most biomes; and (2) the high T threshold of respiration dynamically adjusts upward when plants are challenged with warmer and hotter climates., (© 2020 The Authors New Phytologist © 2020 New Phytologist Trust.)

High-temperature tolerance in plants is important in a warming world, with extreme heat waves predicted to increase in frequency and duration, potentially leading to lethal heating of leaves. Global patterns of high-temperature tolerance are documented in animals, but generally not in plants, limiting our ability to assess risks associated with climate warming. To assess whether there are global patterns in high-temperature tolerance of leaf metabolism, we quantified T crit (high temperature where minimal chlorophyll a fluorescence rises rapidly and thus photosystem II is disrupted) and T max (temperature where leaf respiration in darkness is maximal, beyond which respiratory function rapidly declines) in upper canopy leaves of 218 plant species spanning seven biomes. Mean site-based T crit values ranged from 41.5 °C in the Alaskan arctic to 50.8 °C in lowland tropical rainforests of Peruvian Amazon. For T max , the equivalent values were 51.0 and 60.6 °C in the Arctic and Amazon, respectively. T crit and T max followed similar biogeographic patterns, increasing linearly (˜8 °C) from polar to equatorial regions. Such increases in high-temperature tolerance are much less than expected based on the 20 °C span in high-temperature extremes across the globe. Moreover, with only modest high-temperature tolerance despite high summer temperature extremes, species in mid-latitude (~20-50°) regions have the narrowest thermal safety margins in upper canopy leaves; these regions are at the greatest risk of damage due to extreme heat-wave events, especially under conditions when leaf temperatures are further elevated by a lack of transpirational cooling. Using predicted heat-wave events for 2050 and accounting for possible thermal acclimation of T crit and T max , we also found that these safety margins could shrink in a warmer world, as rising temperatures are likely to exceed thermal tolerance limits. Thus, increasing numbers of species in many biomes may be at risk as heat-wave events become more severe with climate change., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Plant respiration constitutes a massive carbon flux to the atmosphere, and a major control on the evolution of the global carbon cycle. It therefore has the potential to modulate levels of climate change due to the human burning of fossil fuels. Neither current physiological nor terrestrial biosphere models adequately describe its short-term temperature response, and even minor differences in the shape of the response curve can significantly impact estimates of ecosystem carbon release and/or storage. Given this, it is critical to establish whether there are predictable patterns in the shape of the respiration-temperature response curve, and thus in the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of respiration across the globe. Analyzing measurements in a comprehensive database for 231 species spanning 7 biomes, we demonstrate that temperature-dependent increases in leaf respiration do not follow a commonly used exponential function. Instead, we find a decelerating function as leaves warm, reflecting a declining sensitivity to higher temperatures that is remarkably uniform across all biomes and plant functional types. Such convergence in the temperature sensitivity of leaf respiration suggests that there are universally applicable controls on the temperature response of plant energy metabolism, such that a single new function can predict the temperature dependence of leaf respiration for global vegetation. This simple function enables straightforward description of plant respiration in the land-surface components of coupled earth system models. Our cross-biome analyses shows significant implications for such fluxes in cold climates, generally projecting lower values compared with previous estimates.

Recent compilations of experimental and observational data have documented global temperature-dependent patterns of variation in leaf dark respiration (R), but it remains unclear whether local adjustments in respiration over time (through thermal acclimation) are consistent with the patterns in R found across geographical temperature gradients. We integrated results from two global empirical syntheses into a simple temperature-dependent respiration framework to compare the measured effects of respiration acclimation-over-time and variation-across-space to one another, and to a null model in which acclimation is ignored. Using these models, we projected the influence of thermal acclimation on: seasonal variation in R; spatial variation in mean annual R across a global temperature gradient; and future increases in R under climate change. The measured strength of acclimation-over-time produces differences in annual R across spatial temperature gradients that agree well with global variation-across-space. Our models further project that acclimation effects could potentially halve increases in R (compared with the null model) as the climate warms over the 21st Century. Convergence in global temperature-dependent patterns of R indicates that physiological adjustments arising from thermal acclimation are capable of explaining observed variation in leaf respiration at ambient growth temperatures across the globe., (© 2015 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2015 New Phytologist Trust.)

Summary: Several publications have examined leaf‐trait and carbon‐cycling shifts along an Amazon–Andes transect spanning 3.5 km in elevation and 16°C in mean annual temperature. Photosynthetic capacity was previously shown to increase as temperature declines with increasing elevation, counteracting enzyme‐kinetic effects. Primary production declines, nonetheless, due to decreasing light availability. We aimed to predict leaf‐trait and production gradients from first principles, using published data to test an emerging theory whereby photosynthetic traits and primary production depend on optimal acclimation and/or adaptation to environment.We re‐analysed published data for 210 species at 25 sites, fitting linear relationships to elevation for both predicted and observed photosynthetic traits and primary production.Declining leaf‐internal/ambient CO2 ratio (χ) and increasing carboxylation (Vcmax) and electron‐transport (Jmax) capacities with increasing elevation were predicted. Increases in leaf nitrogen content with elevation were explained by increasing Vcmax and leaf mass‐per‐area. Leaf and soil phosphorus covaried, but after controlling for elevation, no nutrient metric accounted for any additional variance in photosynthetic traits. Primary production was predicted to decline with elevation.This analysis unifies leaf and ecosystem observations in a common theoretical framework. The insensitivity of primary production to temperature is shown to emerge as a consequence of the optimisation of photosynthetic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant respiration is an important contributor to the proposed positive global carbon‐cycle feedback to climate change. However, as a major component, leaf mitochondrial ('dark') respiration (Rd) differs among species adapted to contrasting environments and is known to acclimate to sustained changes in temperature. No accepted theory explains these phenomena or predicts its magnitude. Here we propose that the acclimation of Rd follows an optimal behaviour related to the need to maintain long‐term average photosynthetic capacity (Vcmax) so that available environmental resources can be most efficiently used for photosynthesis. To test this hypothesis, we extend photosynthetic co‐ordination theory to predict the acclimation of Rd to growth temperature via a link to Vcmax, and compare predictions to a global set of measurements from 112 sites spanning all terrestrial biomes. This extended co‐ordination theory predicts that field‐measured Rd and Vcmax accessed at growth temperature (Rd,tg and Vcmax,tg) should increase by 3.7% and 5.5% per degree increase in growth temperature. These acclimated responses to growth temperature are less steep than the corresponding instantaneous responses, which increase 8.1% and 9.9% per degree of measurement temperature for Rd and Vcmax respectively. Data‐fitted responses proof indistinguishable from the values predicted by our theory, and smaller than the instantaneous responses. Theory and data are also shown to agree that the basal rates of both Rd and Vcmax assessed at 25°C (Rd,25 and Vcmax,25) decline by ~4.4% per degree increase in growth temperature. These results provide a parsimonious general theory for Rd acclimation to temperature that is simpler—and potentially more reliable—than the plant functional type‐based leaf respiration schemes currently employed in most ecosystem and land‐surface models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-atmosphere exchanges influence atmospheric CO2. Emphasis has been on describing photosynthetic CO2 uptake, but less on respiration losses. New global datasets describe upper canopy dark respiration (Rd) and temperature dependencies. This allows characterisation of baseline Rd, instantaneous temperature responses and longer-term thermal acclimation effects. Here we show the global implications of these parameterisations with a global gridded land model. This model aggregates Rd to whole-plant respiration Rp, driven with meteorological forcings spanning uncertainty across climate change models. For preindustrial estimates, new baseline Rd increases Rp and especially in the tropics. Compared to new baseline, revised instantaneous response decreases Rp for mid-latitudes, while acclimation lowers this for the tropics with increases elsewhere. Under global warming, new Rd estimates amplify modelled respiration increases, although partially lowered by acclimation. Future measurements will refine how Rd aggregates to whole-plant respiration. Our analysis suggests Rp could be around 30% higher than existing estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem models commonly assume that key photosynthetic traits, such as carboxylation-capacity measured at a standard temperature, are constant in time. The temperature responses of modelled photosynthetic/respiratory rates then depend entirely on enzyme kinetics. Optimality considerations suggest this assumption may be incorrect. The 'co-ordination hypothesis' (that Rubisco- and electron-transport limited rates of photosynthesis are co-limiting under typical daytime conditions) predicts instead that carboxylation (Vcmax) and light-harvesting (Jmax) capacities, and mitochondrial respiration in the dark (Rdark), should acclimate so that they increase with growth temperature - but less steeply than their instantaneous response rates. To explore this hypothesis, photosynthetic measurements were carried out on woody species during the warm and the cool seasons in the semi-arid Great Western Woodlands, Australia, under broadly similar light environments. A consistent linear relationship between Vcmax and Jmax was found across species. Vcmax, Jmax and Rdark increased with temperature, but values standardized to 25 °C declined. The ci:ca ratio increased slightly with temperature. The leaf N:P ratio was lower in the warm season. The slopes of the relationships of log-transformed Vcmax and Jmax to temperature were close to values predicted by the co-ordination hypothesis, but shallower than those predicted by enzyme kinetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaf dark respiration ( Rdark) is an important yet poorly quantified component of the global carbon cycle. Given this, we analyzed a new global database of Rdark and associated leaf traits., Data for 899 species were compiled from 100 sites (from the Arctic to the tropics). Several woody and nonwoody plant functional types (PFTs) were represented. Mixed-effects models were used to disentangle sources of variation in Rdark., Area-based Rdark at the prevailing average daily growth temperature ( T) of each site increased only twofold from the Arctic to the tropics, despite a 20°C increase in growing T (8-28°C). By contrast, Rdark at a standard T (25°C, Rdark25) was threefold higher in the Arctic than in the tropics, and twofold higher at arid than at mesic sites. Species and PFTs at cold sites exhibited higher Rdark25 at a given photosynthetic capacity ( Vcmax25) or leaf nitrogen concentration ([N]) than species at warmer sites. Rdark25 values at any given Vcmax25 or [N] were higher in herbs than in woody plants., The results highlight variation in Rdark among species and across global gradients in T and aridity. In addition to their ecological significance, the results provide a framework for improving representation of Rdark in terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) and associated land-surface components of Earth system models (ESMs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]