Drought stress is becoming increasingly common with climate change, with negative impacts on tree growth and survival. The mechanisms of drought mortality in trees are often attributed to carbon starvation or hydraulic...
Author - Joseph Stinziano
Joseph Stinziano
Waring out the carbon: is net primary productivity proportional to gross primary productivity?
Gross primary productivity represents the total carbon fixed through photosynthesis in an ecosystem. Since plants also breakdown sugars produced through photosynthesis, releasing carbon and energy for metabolism, plant...
A tome for the phloem: Tree Physiology’s Special Issue on Phloem
Phloem is a crucial tissue in trees, responsible for transporting carbon and cycling of nutrients throughout the plant. However, there is comparatively little information on phloem physiology compared to other tissues...
To drink, or not to drink – do trees coordinate their water supply with environmental conditions?
Predicting future responses of trees to drought is notoriously difficult, requiring consideration of many factors, including temperature, soil type, and how trees regulate their water usage. Water regulation in trees...
Waking up to respiration: leaf respiration in the light alters our interpretation of ecosystem carbon fluxes
In plants, respiration is usually inhibited in the light compared to the dark. Measuring respiration in the light is particularly difficult, because photosynthesis and photorespiration are occurring as well...
Fueling the fire – how is stem growth respiration linked to stem growth?
Understanding how forests grow and how they metabolize carbon is crucial to ecosystem carbon flux, feedbacks between vegetation and climate, and the forestry. However, a key question remains unanswered: how is carbon...
Trading food for water – trees exude more carbon under drought stress
Plants secrete carbon compounds into soils through their roots, affecting microbes in such a way that nutrient availability in the soil can increase. This root exudation can cost over 10% of the carbon fixed through...
Pining for resistance: a new way to assess pine susceptibility to fungal diseases
McAllister et al. demonstrate the utility of rh-qPCR to quantify ophiostomoid fungi in situ from MPB and pine DNA extracts
Mistletoe-ing around the tree reduces growth in forests
It might seem romantic, but the last thing a tree wants is an embrace under mistletoe.
Bamboosting growth: why does bamboo grow so fast?
What is it that gives bamboo its rapid growth? One team has been looking for the answer not with the fastest plants, but with the slower variants to see what they lack.
Too much tubulin flips cell wall flexibility
Joseph Stinziano investigates how something you might find in jam controls how easily trees open or close access their leaves.
Where is the water? A new way to ‘see’ the water in tall trees
Water flows down, so how can even the tallest trees draw it up to the top of the canopy?
Recovering from winter: how conifers overcome their own seasonal affective disorder
Evergreen conifers face a unique challenge during winter: it is too cold for photosynthesis, but their leaves still absorb light energy. This can be dangerous to leaf tissues if the absorbed light energy is not...
Growing after attack: what predicts tree responses to herbivores?
Trees can face significant threats from herbivores, particularly ones that defoliate (i.e. eat leaves and reduce leaf area). After being attacked by defoliators, trees can respond by changing their growth patterns and...
