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Since the Industrial Revolution began approximately 200 years ago, global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) has increased from 270 to 401 µL L−1, and average global temperatures have risen by 0.85°C, with the most pronounced effects occurring near the poles (IPCC, 2013). In addition, the last 30 years were the warmest decades in 1,400 years (PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013). By the end of this century, [CO2] is expected to reach at least 700 µL L−1, and global temperatures are projected to rise by 4°C or more based on greenhouse gas scenarios (IPCC, 2013). Precipitation regimes also are expected to shift on a regional scale as the hydrologic cycle intensifies, resulting in greater extremes in dry versus wet conditions (Medvigy and Beaulieu, 2012). Such changes already are having profound impacts on the physiological functioning of plants that scale up to influence interactions between plants and other organisms and ecosystems as a whole (Fig. 1). Shifts in climate also may alter selective pressures on plants and, therefore, have the potential to influence evolutionary processes. In some cases, evolutionary responses can occur as rapidly as only a few generations (Ward et al., 2000; Franks et al., 2007; Lau and Lennon, 2012), but there is still much to learn in this area, as pointed out by Franks et al. (2014). Such responses have the potential to alter ecological processes, including species interactions, via ecoevolutionary feedbacks (Shefferson and Salguero-Gómez, 2015). In this review, we discuss microevolutionary and macroevolutionary processes that can shape plant responses to climate change as well as direct physiological responses to climate change during the recent geologic past as recorded in the fossil record. We also present work that documents how plant physiological and evolutionary responses influence interactions with other organisms as an example of how climate change effects on plants can scale to influence higher order processes within ecosystems. Thus, this review combines findings in plant physiological ecology and evolutionary biology for a comprehensive view of plant responses to climate change, both past and present.
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This content will become publicly available on June 11, 2026
Plant Individuality: A Physiological Approach
While plants provide some of the most interesting cases for individuality-related problems in philosophy of biology (e.g., Clarke 2012; Gerber 2018), no work has examined plant individuality through specifically focusing on physiological processes, a lacuna this paper aims to fill. We think that different domains of biology suggest different approaches, and our specific focus on physiological processes, such as plant hormone systems and source-sink balance regulations, will help to identify coordinated systems at different scales. Identifying physiological individuals is crucial for a wide range of research in plant biology, including research on plant nutrition, transport and accumulation of nutrients in edible parts, and plant responses to various stress conditions such as plant diseases and changing abiotic conditions. Although plants do produce systemic responses to local stimuli (e.g., a sudden wound on one leaf can result in a whole-plant response), considering them as individuals is (often) problematic. They are highly modular organisms, and they can grow vegetatively, constituting clones of what seem, superficially, to be individual organisms. Moreover, as with animals, there are problems raised by their symbiotic relations to micro-organisms, most notably the mycorrhiza, through which they may be connected to other plants. We argue that coordinated plant systems can be distinguished at multiple scales from a physiological perspective. While none of these is a unit that must be necessarily called “the individual,” they offer integrated approaches for various research problems in plant science.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2240749
- PAR ID:
- 10632680
- Publisher / Repository:
- Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology
- Edition / Version:
- https://doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.5261
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2475-3025
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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