Leaf Volatile Emissions Structure Tree Community Assembly and Mediate Climate Feedbacks in Tropical Forests
type: CreativeWork
description: The biochemistry of leaves merges the fates of trees and the atmosphere. Leaf primary metabolism cycles carbon and indirectly drives atmospheric circulation via the latent heat of transpiration. Tropical forests contain half of global forest carbon, and actively cycle carbon and energy year round, making them critical components of the coupled biosphere-climate system. Climate change threatens tropical forests with rising temperatures and increasing variability of precipitation. Their response will influence future biodiversity as well as the fate of the climate. Understanding the physiological attributes that define tropical tree responses and feedbacks to climate is a current research priority. The emission of isoprene gas from plant leaves has been demonstrated to enhance leaf tolerance to high temperatures and drought. Isoprene is a volatile secondary metabolite produced in the chloroplast by approximately one-third of plant species. While the benefits of isoprene are supported by extensive laboratory and greenhouse-based research, work has only begun to explore how the trait is integrated in plant functional strategies. Whether isoprene influences differential species performance and survival across environments has yet to be tested. An impediment to filling this clear ecological research gap has been a lack of instrumentation capable of quantifying isoprene emissions from leaves in remote field settings. The first study presented here tests the hypothesis that isoprene emission influences plant community assembly shifts across environmental gradients and through time in tropical forests. The capacity for a species to produce isoprene was associated with increased relative abundance at higher temperatures and following drought anomalies. A negative relationship with the length of seasonal drought suggests a trade-off between isoprene emission and other plant traits, such as deciduous leaf habit. The second study presents the development of a new instrument that…
abstract: The biochemistry of leaves merges the fates of trees and the atmosphere. Leaf primary metabolism cycles carbon and indirectly drives atmospheric circulation via the latent heat of transpiration. Tropical forests contain half of global forest carbon, and actively cycle carbon and energy year round, making them critical components of the coupled biosphere-climate system. Climate change threatens tropical forests with rising temperatures and increasing variability of precipitation. Their response will influence future biodiversity as well as the fate of the climate. Understanding the physiological attributes that define tropical tree responses and feedbacks to climate is a current research priority. The emission of isoprene gas from plant leaves has been demonstrated to enhance leaf tolerance to high temperatures and drought. Isoprene is a volatile secondary metabolite produced in the chloroplast by approximately one-third of plant species. While the benefits of isoprene are supported by extensive laboratory and greenhouse-based research, work has only begun to explore how the trait is integrated in plant functional strategies. Whether isoprene influences differential species performance and survival across environments has yet to be tested. An impediment to filling this clear ecological research gap has been a lack of instrumentation capable of quantifying isoprene emissions from leaves in remote field settings. The first study presented here tests the hypothesis that isoprene emission influences plant community assembly shifts across environmental gradients and through time in tropical forests. The capacity for a species to produce isoprene was associated with increased relative abundance at higher temperatures and following drought anomalies. A negative relationship with the length of seasonal drought suggests a trade-off between isoprene emission and other plant traits, such as deciduous leaf habit. The second study presents the development of a new instrument that…
author: Taylor, Tyeen Colligan
language: en_US
keywords: forest-atmosphere feedbacks, instrumentation, plant functional traits, secondary metabolism, tropical forest, community assembly
date published: 2017
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:55:47Z
provider: University of Arizona
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Arizona.

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/623061