BACKGROUND Both leaf attributes and stomatal traits are linked to water economy in land plants. However, it is unclear whether these two components are associated evolutionarily. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In characterizing the possible effect of phylogeny on leaf attributes and stomatal traits, we hypothesized that a correlated evolution exists between the two. Using a phylogenetic compa...

We studied the evolution of leaf size, sapling canopy allometry, and related traits in 17 Acer species growing in the understory of temperate deciduous forests, using parsimony methods, randomization tests, and independent contrasts calculated on a phylogeny inferred from nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences. Bivariate correlations and multivariate analyses indicated tw...

Greenhouse experiments in a completely randomized design were carried out to investigate the effects of nitroxin fertilizer (0, 1 and 2 li/ha) on morphological and physiological traits of Amaranthus retroflexus in 2013. The traits in the study included plant height, fresh and dry weight of shoots, roots, stem and leaf, Chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, carotenoids, anthocyanin, a...

Leaf size and shape play important roles in agronomic traits, such as yield, quality and stress responses. Wide variations in leaf morphological traits exist in cultivated varieties of many plant species. By now, the genetics of leaf shape and size have not been characterized in Brassica napus. In this study, a population of 172 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was used for quantitative trait lo...

Mosses are an understudied group of plants that can potentially confirm or expand principles of plant function described for tracheophytes, from which they diverge strongly in structure. We quantified 35 physiological and morphological traits from cell-, leaf- and canopy-level, for 10 ground-, trunk- and branch-dwelling Hawaiian species. We hypothesized that trait values would reflect the disti...

Introgression lines (ILs), in which genetic material from wild tomato species is introgressed into a domesticated background, have been used extensively in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) improvement. Here, we genotype an IL population derived from the wild desert tomato Solanum pennellii at ultrahigh density, providing the exact gene content harbored by each line. To take advantage of this infor...

Global-scale quantification of relationships between plant traits gives insight into the evolution of the world's vegetation, and is crucial for parameterizing vegetation-climate models. A database was compiled, comprising data for hundreds to thousands of species for the core 'leaf economics' traits leaf lifespan, leaf mass per area, photosynthetic capacity, dark respiration, and leaf nitrogen...

An experiment was carried out to study the variability of leaf anatomical characters of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars and their association with grain yields. Results indicated that in most of the cases cultivar differences were significant. In respect of 6th leaf anatomical characters, simple correlation coefficients indicated that most of the leaf anatomical traits had significant ne...

Global change, such as warming and ocean acidification, and local anthropogenic disturbances, such as eutrophication, can have profound impacts on marine organisms. However, we are far from being able to predict the outcome of multiple interacting disturbances on seagrass communities. Herbivores are key in determining plant community structure and the transfer of energy up the food web. Global ...

Microclimate in different positions on a host plant has strong direct effects on herbivores. But little is known about indirect effects due to changes of leaf traits. We hypothesized that herbivory increases from upper canopy to lower canopy and understory due to a combination of direct and indirect pathways. Furthermore, we hypothesized that herbivory in the understory differs between tree spe...