Previous studies have found the size scaling exponent of metabolic rates in unicellular algae often deviates from the exponent of usually found for heterotrophs. This study confirms a significant linear relationship between cell volume ( m ) and intrinsic growth rate (h ), carbonnormalised photosynthetic capacity and performanace (h ), and carbon-normalised respiratory rate (h ) for 8 marine ce...

Leaf longevity (LL) varies more than 20-fold in tropical evergreen forests, but it remains unclear how to capture these variations using predictive models. Current theories of LL that are based on carbon optimisation principles are challenging to quantitatively assess because of uncertainty across species in the 'ageing rate:' the rate at which leaf photosynthetic capacity declines with age. He...

Generally, primed seeds produce larger and heavier plants than non-primed seeds. This may be simply due to rapid emergence and extension of leaf growth, or the influence of other physiological processes. The effect of seed pretreatment with salicylic acid (SA) on some physiological and photosynthetic characteristics of the safflower seedlings, cv. Goldasht, was examined under field condition. T...

Seaweeds that lack carbon-concentrating mechanisms are potentially inorganic carbon-limited under current air equilibrium conditions. To estimate effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and ocean acidification on photosynthetic rates, we modeled rates of photosynthesis in response to pCO2, temperature, and their interaction under limiting and saturating photon flux densiti...

The forfeiting of photosynthetic capabilities has occurred independently many times throughout eukaryotic evolution. But almost all non-photosynthetic plants and algae still retain a colorless plastid and an associated genome, which performs fundamental processes apart from photosynthesis. Unfortunately, little is known about the forces leading to photosynthetic loss; this is largely because th...

Oxygen inhibition of photosynthesis was studied with intact spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) chloroplasts which exhibited very high rates of photosynthetic CO(2) reduction and were insensitive to additions of photosynthetic intermediates when CO(2) was available at saturating concentrations. Photosynthetic rates were measured polarographically as O(2) evolution, and the extent of the reduction of...