It's only natural: Plant respiration in unmanaged systems

Abstract

Respiration plays a key role in the terrestrial carbon cycle and is a fundamental metabolic process in all plant tissues and cells. We review respiration from the perspective of plants that grow in their natural habitat and how it is influenced by wide-ranging elements of different scales, from metabolic substrate availability to shifts in climate. Decades of field-based measurements have honed our understanding of the biological and environmental controls on leaf, root, stem, and whole-organism respiration. Despite this effort, there remain gaps in our knowledge within and across species and ecosystems, especially in more challenging-to-measure tissues like roots. Recent databases of respiration rates and associated leaf traits from species representing diverse biomes, plant functional types, and regional climates have allowed for a wider-lens view at modeling this important CO2 flux. We also re-analyze published datasets to show that maximum leaf respiration rates (Rmax) in species from around the globe are related both to leaf economic traits and environmental variables (precipitation, air temperature), but that root respiration does not follow the same latitudinal trends previously published for leaf data. We encourage the ecophysiological community to continue to expand their study of plant respiration in tissues that are difficult to measure and at the whole plant and ecosystem levels to address outstanding questions in the field.

New insights into the mechanisms of plant isotope fractionation from combined analysis of intramolecular13C and deuterium abundances inPinus nigratree-ring glucose

“…Thus, this mechanism contrasts with the stronger drought-induced decrease of Δ 1 ’ compared to Δ 3 ’ and the apparent absence of the diffusion-rubisco signal in Δ 2 ’. Similar mechanisms may apply to the cytosol where increasing drought can cause increasing relative flux into the cytosolic OPPP; see process (ii). In natural systems, leaf dark respiration increases with drought (Schmiege et al ., 2023 and references therein) while carbon assimilation decreases (McDowell et al ., 2008). When the PGI reaction is in equilibrium, F6P C-1 is 13 C depleted while F6P C-2 is 13 C enriched relative to the corresponding G6P positions (Table 2).…”

“…In natural systems, leaf dark respiration increases with drought (Schmiege et al ., 2023 and references therein) while carbon assimilation decreases (McDowell et al ., 2008). When the PGI reaction is in equilibrium, F6P C-1 is 13 C depleted while F6P C-2 is 13 C enriched relative to the corresponding G6P positions (Table 2).…”

Changes in physio-biochemical metabolism, phenolics and antioxidant capacity during germination of different wheat varieties

“…Respiration rate was an important physiological index of plant metabolism ( Ikkonen, Shibaeva, Sherudilo, & Titov, 2020 ). Plant respiration can provide most of the energy for plant life activities, and also provide the raw material for the synthesis of other compounds in the body ( Schmiege, Heskel, Fan, & Way, 2023 ). The respiration rate of wheat sprout was closely related to its growth condition.…”

Breathing Planet Earth: Analysis of Keeling’s Data on CO2 and O2 with Respiratory Quotient (RQ), Part II: Energy-Based Global RQ and CO2 Budget

“…Generally, the biological systems (BSs) include humans, plants and trees, phytoplankton (PP), etc. The plants, trees and PP are generally referred to as biomasses and perform both (i) respiration, which consumes almost 50% of C(s) produced via the photosynthesis process [2], and (ii) production of oxygen. But humans perform only respiration without the production of oxygen.…”

“…Comparison between the RQ method and previous data for CO2 (GT/year) sink by atmosphere, land, and ocean storage; z = 0.5, i.e., ocean supplies 50% of total O 2 while land supplies 50% of O 2 . Data is from Ref.[50].…”