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Choose a Project: Ph. D. Research Home Page 1. Atmospheric CO₂ & Climate Change 2. Early Land Plant Analogues 3. Conifer Forests in a Polar Environment 4. Megaherbivores and the Superbiome 5. Live Fast Die Young 6. Atmospheric CO₂ and Agriculture 7. Uprooting of Urban Trees 8. C₄ Photosyhthesis in Alloteropsis 9. Modelling Antarctic Ice Sheets 10. Herbivory in Antarctic Fossil Forests

Personnel
Graduate Student:

Supervisors:

Rebecca Atkinson

Mark Rees, Mike Burrell and Colin Osborne

Project dates: October 2006

Rebecca is using experiments and field observations to investigate why fast-growing plant species die at a younger age then slow-growers.

Understanding the natural diversity of plant life cycles is a fundamental question at the interface of ecology and evolution. Recent work has identified the fast-slow continuum as one of the primary axes differentiating plant species. The continuum postulates that species with rapid growth rates inevitably die young and vice versa, a critical trade-off between growth and survival that is observed in natural systems ranging from seedling to mature tropical trees.

Rebecca is exploring the physiological basis of the fast-slow continuum, seeking the key mechanisms linking fast growth with early mortality. She is starting out by following an experimental approach, combining field experiments with more detailed physiological work in controlled environment conditions. Her model system will be monocarpic perennial plants, which have a single fatal bout of reproduction, as they have particularly simple allocation strategies.