http://www.functionalecology.org current issue RSS Feed http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/759307/The_aerodynamics_and_efficiency_of_wind_pollination_in_grasses.html 1. Under natural selection for sexual success, the reproductive organs of plants should evolve to become highly effective pollen receptors. Among wind-pollinated plants, larger reproductive structures appear counter-adapted to accumulate pollen by impaction on their windward surfaces, because airborne particles are less able to penetrate the thicker boundary layer of larger targets. Therefore, it has been proposed that wind-pollinated plants with pollen receptors on relatively large... 2010-03-24T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/759319/Rethinking_the_value_of_high_wood_density.html 1. Current thinking holds that wood density mediates a tradeoff between strength and economy of construction, with higher wood density providing higher strength but at higher cost. 2. Yet the further away wood fibres are from the central axis of the trunk, the more they increase the strength of the trunk; thus, a fat trunk of low-density wood can achieve greater strength at lower construction cost than a thin trunk of high-density wood. 3. What then are the countervailing advantages of high... 2010-03-15T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/759339/What_drives_retrogressive_succession_Plant_strategies_to_tolerate_infertile_and_.html 1. During retrogressive succession, vegetation shifts from taller forests with higher species richness to shorter woody communities of lower diversity. Studies of soil chronosequences have emphasized the role of phosphorus (P) depletion in driving these changes in community structure and composition, but neglected the possible role of poor drainage which is often associated with the oldest sites. 2. We used a fully factorial pot experiment to investigate the effects of soil water conditions... 2010-02-17T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/537819/Adaptive_foragers_and_community_ecology_linking_individuals_to_communities_and_e.html 2010-01-07T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/537823/Implications_of_flexible_foraging_for_interspecific_interactions_lessons_from_si.html 1. Some types of flexible foraging behaviours were incorporated into ecological thought in the 1960s, but the population dynamical consequences of such behaviours are still poorly understood. 2. Flexible foraging-related traits can be classified as shifts in general and specific foraging effort, and shifts in general and specific defense. 3. Many flexible foraging behaviours suggested by theory have received very little empirical attention, and empirical techniques used to compare the... 2010-01-07T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/537825/Consequences_of_adaptive_foraging_in_diverse_communities.html 1. Selective pressures acting on foraging activities constrain the strength of interaction, hence the stability and energetic availability in food webs. 2. Because such selective pressures are usually measured at the individual level and because most experimental and theoretical works focus on simple settings, linking adaptive foraging with community scale patterns is still a far stretch. 3. Some recent models incorporate foraging adaptation in diverse communities. The models vary in the way... 2010-01-07T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/537827/Bodymass_constraints_on_foraging_behaviour_determine_population_and_foodweb_dyna.html 1. In community and population ecology, there is a chronic gap between the classic Eltonian ecology describing patterns in abundance and body mass across species and ecosystems and the more process oriented foraging ecology addressing interactions and quantitative population dynamics. However, this dichotomy is arbitrary, because body mass also determines most species traits affecting foraging interactions and population dynamics. 2. In this review, allometric (body-mass dependent) scaling of... 2010-01-07T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/681081/Ecophysiological_significance_of_leaf_size_variation_in_Proteaceae_from_the_Cape.html 1. Small leaves of species endemic to Mediterranean-type climate areas have been associated with both low rainfall and nutrient availability, but the physiological reasons for this association remain unknown. 2. We postulated that small leaves have thin boundary layers that facilitate transpiration in winter and sensible heat loss in summer. High transpiration rates when water is available may facilitate nutrient acquisition in winter, whereas efficient sensible heat loss reduces the... 2009-12-29T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/681087/Plant_traits_leaf_palatability_and_litter_decomposability_for_cooccurring_woody_.html 1. Non-native invasive and nitrogen (N)-fixing plant species can cause large ecosystem-level impacts, particularly when they differ in functionally important plant traits from native and non N-fixing species. However, it remains unclear as to whether and how plant invasion status and N fixation ability consistently influence key plant leaf and litter traits, and trait-driven processes like herbivory and decomposition. 2. We compared leaf and litter traits, leaf palatability and litter... 2009-12-29T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/588293/Interspecific_relationships_among_growth_mortality_and_xylem_traits_of_woody_spe.html 1. Wood density is considered a key functional trait influencing the growth and survival of woody plants and has been shown to be related to a slow–fast rate-of-living continuum. Wood density is, however, an emergent trait arising from several vascular properties of wood, including the diameter and frequency of xylem conduits. 2. We aimed to test the hypotheses that there is a set of inter-related trade-offs linked to the different functions of wood, that these trade-offs have direct... 2009-11-26T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/681083/A_multitrait_test_of_the_leafheightseed_plant_strategy_scheme_with_133_species_f.html 1. Westoby's [Plant and Soil (1998), 199, 213] Leaf-Height-Seed (LHS) plant strategy scheme quantifies the strategy of a plant based on its location in a three-dimensional space defined by three functional traits: specific leaf area (SLA), height, and seed mass. This scheme is based on aboveground traits and may neglect strategies of belowground resource capture if root functioning is not mirrored in any of the axes. How then do fine roots fit into the LHS scheme? 2. We measured 10 functional... 2009-11-25T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/681085/Ontogenetic_shift_in_the_scaling_of_dark_respiration_with_wholeplant_mass_in_sev.html 1. Recent evidence suggests that metabolic scaling exponents should shift from ≈ 1 to ∼¾ as plants grow from seedlings to mature trees. This study examines whether there is an ontogenetic shift in the scaling exponent of dark respiration with whole-plant biomass and whether the allometry of dark respiration vs. plant total nitrogen content is consistent with these metabolic scaling relationships. 2. We examined seedling mass, dark respiration, biomass allocation, water and nitrogen contents,... 2009-11-24T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/588297/Tree_transpiration_varies_spatially_in_response_to_atmospheric_but_not_edaphic_c.html 1. Measuring transpiration simultaneously in time and space can establish a better understanding of how to mechanistically scale spatiotemporal values. 2. This study tested the following predictions to falsify a tree hydraulic hypothesis of spatial variation in transpiration: (i) stands with larger trees will a have longer range and greater sill and nugget at a given vapour pressure deficit (D); (ii) the range, sill and nugget will decline faster with increasing D with larger trees; and (iii)... 2009-11-02T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/588291/Intraseasonal_climate_and_habitatspecific_variability_controls_the_flowering_phe.html 1. High alpine plants endure a cold climate with short growing seasons entailing severe consequences of an improper timing of development. Hence, their flowering phenology is expected to be rigorously controlled by climatic factors. 2. We studied ten alpine plant species from habitats with early and late melting snow cover for 2 years and compared the synchronizing effect of temperature sums (TS), time of snowmelt (SM) and photoperiod (PH) on their flowering phenology. Intraseasonal and... 2009-09-11T00:00:00Z http://www.functionalecology.org/details/journalArticle/588295/The_leaf_economics_spectrum_and_the_prediction_of_photosynthetic_lightx2013respo.html 1. In this paper we determine whether interspecific variation in entire photosynthetic light–response curves correlates with the leaf traits of the 'leaf economics spectrum' (LES) and the degree to which such traits can predict interspecific variation in light–response curves. This question is important because light–response curves are included in many ecosystem models of plant productivity and gas exchange but such models do not take into account interspecific variation in such response... 2009-08-24T00:00:00Z