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Choose a Project: Projects Home Page 1. Atmospheric CO2 & Leaf Evolution 2. Polar Forests - Carbon Balance 3. Polar Forests - Distribution and Ecology 4. Biogenic Trace Gas Fluxes 5. The Evolution of C4 Plants 6. Palaeoceanographic changes 7. Biodiversity Response to Climate Change 8. Evolution of C4 Photosynthesis 9. Terminal Cretaceous Climate Change 10. C4 phylogenetic history

Personnel
Post-doc:

Research technician:
Research assistant

Sam Taylor

Stephen Hulme
Josie Welsh

Funding

NERC standard research grant

The C₄ photosynthetic pathway has originated in more than thirty independent lineages and is one of the most striking examples of convergent evolution in plants. Despite their shared physiology, these independent C₄ groups show important contrasts in their responses to water availability; some decline in abundance along rainfall gradients, whilst others increase. This project aims to resolve the physiological and phylogenetic components of C₄ plant water relations by combining experimental investigations with model and field approaches. It will address two key questions:

1. What are the direct effects of C₄ physiology on plant water relations?
2. To what extent do the water relations of C₄ plants depend on background traits of the phylogenetic group where the pathway originated?

Experimental work at the University of Sheffield is comparing the major determinants of water use in independent groups of C₃ and C₄ grasses, using a sampling design based on recent molecular phylogenies. These experiments are complemented by a field-based common garden experiment at Rhodes University in South Africa, subjecting the same species to natural drought events.