All About Plants
This enzyme is notoriously inefficient, sometimes binding oxygen instead of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
What is Rubisco?
This dynamic zone of soil, directly influenced by root exudates and microbial activity, plays a critical role in nutrient cycling, plant health, and water uptake.
What is the rhizosphere?
This term describes the average time an element or compound remains in a particular reservoir before moving to another.
What is residence time?
In his 1916 paper, Frederic Clements described this type of plant community as the final, stable stage of ecological succession, determined by regional climate and functioning like a superorganism.
What is a climax community?
These plants, which include most temperate trees and crops like wheat and rice, fix carbon directly through the Calvin cycle and are less efficient under high temperatures and low CO₂.
What are C₃ plants?
In forest ecosystems, this group of symbiotic fungi forms sheath-like structures around roots and facilitates nitrogen uptake by accessing organic nutrient pools, especially under nutrient-poor conditions and elevated atmospheric CO₂.
What are ectomycorrhizal fungi?
This key component of acid rain forms from SO₂ and NOₓ emissions and has caused long-term leaching of base cations in forest soils.
What is sulfuric acid (or nitric acid)?
In his 1942 paper, Raymond Lindeman proposed viewing ecosystems as energy-transforming systems, emphasizing the transfer of energy through these structured levels.
What are trophic levels?
Although it associates with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, this common eastern North American tree species often thrives in disturbed soils where AM fungal networks are fragmented, suggesting a flexible nutrient acquisition strategy.
What is red maple (Acer rubrum)?
This type of root-derived compound, when released into forest soils, can increase microbial activity and accelerate the turnover of mineral-associated organic matter, potentially reducing long-term soil carbon storage.
What are simple sugars?
This elemental ratio, often cited as 106:16:1, represents the average atomic proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in marine phytoplankton biomass.
What is the Redfield ratio?
According to MacArthur and Wilson’s theory, species richness on an island is determined by the dynamic equilibrium between these two opposing processes.
What are immigration and extinction?
In tropical forests, this environmental factor can exert stronger control over symbiotic nitrogen fixation than soil nutrient availability, by limiting the energy plants allocate to their microbial partners.
What is light availability?
Certain rhizosphere bacteria and fungi enhance phosphorus uptake by plants through this process, which transforms soil phosphorus into forms that can be absorbed by roots.
What is phosphate solubilization?
This term refers to the process by which carbon is transferred from the atmosphere into the ocean, primarily through the dissolution of CO₂ in seawater.
What is the solubility pump?
In his 1935 paper, A.G. Tansley emphasized that vegetational changes are influenced by both internal processes within the plant community and external environmental forces. He referred to these as these two types of factors.
What are autogenic and allogenic factors?
To maintain functional temperatures under high radiation loads, leaves balance absorbed solar energy with heat dissipation. When stomatal conductance is low or water is scarce, this non-evaporative process becomes the primary mechanism of cooling.
What is convective heat transfer?
Many plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) enhance root development and nutrient uptake by producing this class of phytohormones, which regulate cell elongation and lateral root formation.
What is auxin?
In highly weathered tropical soils, phosphorus becomes unavailable to plants primarily due to sorption onto these two mineral surfaces.
What are iron and aluminum oxides?
In his 1957 paper Concluding Remarks, G. Evelyn Hutchinson described this abstract concept as an “n-dimensional hypervolume” defined by the range of environmental conditions and resources that allow a species to maintain a viable population.
What is the fundamental niche?