Few studies have critically evaluated how morphological variation within individual organisms corresponds to variation within and among species. Subindividual variation in plants facilitates such studies because their indeterminate modular growth generates multiple serially homologous structures along growing axes. Focusing on leaf form, we evaluate how subindividual trait variation relates to ...

Our limited understanding of the climate controls on tropical forest seasonality is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in modeling climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Combining leaf production, litterfall and climate observations from satellite and ground data in the Amazon forest, we show that seasonal variation in leaf production is largely triggered by climate signals, s...

Plants sense the foliar shade of competitors and alter their developmental programs through the shade-avoidance response. Internode and petiole elongation, and changes in overall leaf area and leaf mass per area, are the stereotypical architectural responses to foliar shade in the shoot. However, changes in leaf shape and complexity in response to shade remain incompletely, and qualitatively, d...

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperaturewill influence photosynthesis, growth andyield of agronomic crops.To investigate effects of elevatedCO2andhigh temperature on leaf gas exchanges, activities of Rubisco and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) and growth of grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolorL.Moench), plants were grown in controlled environments at day-time maxim...

The hypersensitive reaction of Samsun NN tobacco leaves to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) was accompanied by a large increase in ethylene production, just before necrotic local lesions became visible. Normal and virus-induced ethylene production were both largely inhibited by 0.1 millimolar aminoethoxyvinylglycine indicating that methionine is a main ethylene precursor.The contribution of methionin...

For serving green tea, there are two prominent methods: steeping the leaf or the powdered leaf (matcha style) in hot water. The purpose of the present study was to reveal chemical and functional differences before and after the powdering process of green tea leaf, since powdered green tea may contribute to expanding the functionality because of the different ingesting style. In this study, we r...

Prediction of projected tree leaf area using allometric relationships with sapwood cross-sectional area is common in treeand stand-level production studies. Measuring sapwood is difficult and often requires destructive sampling. This study tested multiple leaf area prediction models across seven diverse conifer species in the Sierra Nevada of California. The best-fit whole tree leaf area predic...

Freshwater ecosystems are positioned at low levels in the landscape and receive large inputs of diverse plant-based detritus, a major source of energy for consumers in aquatic ecosystems. We conducted Þeld experiments in Urbana, IL to determine the independent and combined effects of leaves of common tree species including thenorthern redoak (Quercus rubraL.), sugarmaple (Acer saccharumMarshall...

The Janzen–Connell model of tropical forest tree diversity predicts that seedlings and young trees growing close to conspecific adults should experience higher levels of damage and mortality from herbivorous insects, with the adult trees acting as either an attractant or source of the herbivores. Previous research in a seasonal forest showed that this pattern of distance-dependent herbivory occ...

Infections sometimes associate with exacerbations of autoimmune diseases through pathways that are poorly understood. Ag-specific mechanisms such as cross-reactivity between a microbial Ag and a self-Ag have received no direct support. In this study, we show that injection of LPS induces experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in TCR-transgenic mice and relapse of encephalomyelitis in normal ...