13. Stomata

Meeting was held 18-19 March 2006, at Network HQ in Sydney	PARTICIPANTS Organizer Mark Hovenden, University of Tasmania Dana Royer - Wesleyan University Greg Jordan - University of Tasmania Lawren Sack - University of Hawaii Ray Carpenter - University of Adelaide Adrienne Nicotra - Australian National University Peter Franks - James Cook University
18 March 06 >

The meeting outlined the structure of two intended research proposals:

1. “A 400 million year record of land plant gas exchange capacity”.
The underlying concept is to establish a broad ranging and detailed record of changes in stomatal characters as a proxy for maximum potential gas exchange. This can represent the evolutionary change in the development of plant sophistication, or a record of response to evolution of environments (change in global CO2, temperature, water availability/evaporative demand). This is a springboard for many subprojects on plant evolution, ecology, structure and function etc. The database of fossil images will be useful in other projects. The sampling will cover the full range of suitably preserved fossil species, and also a wide geographic range. We plan to use data from Australia, North America, Antarctica, India, New Zealand, Central and South America and Europe.

2. "Validating the relationship of stomatal pore index SPI to actual gas exchange”.

Collaborative proposals will be submitted to appropriate funding agencies in Australia and overseas.

Last updated May 2006.