Drought response of mesophyll conductance in forest understory species – impacts on water‐use efficiency and interactions with leaf water movement |
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| Authors: | Robert Hommel Rolf Siegwolf Matthias Saurer Graham D Farquhar Zachary Kayler Juan Pedro Ferrio Arthur Gessler |
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| Institution: | 1. Institute for Landscape Biogeochemistry, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), , 15374 Müncheberg, Germany;2. Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Stable Isotopes and Ecosystem Fluxes, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), , CH 5232 Villigen, Switzerland;3. Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, , Acton, 0200 Australia;4. Department of Crop and Forest Science‐AGROTECNIO Center, Universitat de Lleida, , E‐25198 Lleida, Spain;5. Berlin‐Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), , 14195 Berlin, Germany;6. Long‐term Forest Ecosystem Research (LWF), Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), , CH‐8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland |
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| Abstract: | Regulation of stomatal (gs) and mesophyll conductance (gm) is an efficient means for optimizing the relationship between water loss and carbon uptake in plants. We assessed water‐use efficiency (WUE)‐based drought adaptation strategies with respect to mesophyll conductance of different functional plant groups of the forest understory. Moreover we aimed at assessing the mechanisms of and interactions between water and CO2 conductance in the mesophyll. The facts that an increase in WUE was observed only in the two species that increased gm in response to moderate drought, and that over all five species examined, changes in mesophyll conductance were significantly correlated with the drought‐induced change in WUE, proves the importance of gm in optimizing resource use under water restriction. There was no clear correlation of mesophyll CO2 conductance and the tortuosity of water movement in the leaf across the five species in the control and drought treatments. This points either to different main pathways for CO2 and water in the mesophyll either to different regulation of a common pathway. |
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