68. PROMETHEUS

Organised by Lawren Sack (UCLA), Will Cornwell (U British Columbia) and Lou Santiago (UC Riverside), to be held at Australian National University, Canberra. First meeting 27-30 October, 2009 ***PrometheusWiki Site Launch July 2010***	PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE Lawren Sack - UCLA (USA) Will Cornwell - U British Columbia (Canada) Louis Santiago - UC Riverside (USA) John Evans - Australian National University Brendan Choat - ANU Margaret Barbour - Landcare Research, New Zealand Adrienne Nicotra - ANU Rana Munns - CSIRO Plant Industry Hans Lambers - U Western Australia
Oct 09>

GOAL

Science moves most rapidly when the majority of researchers use similar methods and can easily and rapidly repeat and build upon each other’s discoveries. There is a strong need for standardizing in physiological ecology, as currently many groups utilize different methods and protocols for specialized as well as common measurements (Table 1). There is currently no easy resource to access these protocols or to determine the opinions of experts on the different practices, and this creates a bottleneck in research and student education. While there has been recent work toward standardizing measurements of “key functional traits" with simple equipment (e.g., Cornelissen et al., 2003), physiology and environmental measures, which are in many cases more complicated, have proven more resistant to standardization. We expect that an effort to standardize methods in plant physiological ecology will cause this methods-intensive discipline to flourish due to increased accessibility and demystification of approaches.

Table 1. Examples of methods in plant physiological ecology for which different groups use sometimes disparate methods, and there is no resource to access step-by-step protocols
1. Pressure-volume curves
2. Leaf, stem and root hydraulic conductance and vulnerability
3. Sap flow
4. Gas exchange: maximum rates, A-Ci curves, light response, VPD response
5. Psychrometry
6. Wood density
7. Biomechanics Modulus of elasticity, fracture toughness
8. Microclimatology (irradiance, weather station data)
9. Canopy structure, leaf area index, leaf area: sapwood area
10. Root structure, root area

We propose a working group to create a structure that will facilitate the organization and standardization of methods in the fields of ecological and environmental plant physiology. This is essential to our long-term research and education, and is one of the most important steps to really help our science advance. A new resource is needed to cover the breadth of EEPP methods, whilst also capitalizing on the new technology available for community involvement and web access.

Thus, we propose to create a web wiki as a repository and commentary, easily and constantly updated, for protocols and methods in plant physiological ecology. This web resource, PROtocols, METHods, Explanations and Updated Standards Wiki (PrometheusWiki; Prometheus of Greek Myth having been the Titan who first bestowed fire, at the time the greatest standardized technology).

This web resource will allow one to upload one’s protocols in given topic areas, and these will be indexed. Additionally, once the methods and protocols in a given field are comprehensively posted online, a group of Editors will write a mini-review of methods, which will be updated in response to developments in the field. There will be the possibility for comments and public questions and responses on protocols as well.

With this framework we will gather the updated protocols used by leading labs around the world and put these online with annotation.

All this will lead to better standardizing of methods to allow research from around the world to improve by being directly comparable. Such directly comparable data will facilitate system-level analyses of physiological and ecological data. This is especially important given current efforts to collect of data at multiple sites in parallel by networks such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the international long-term ecological research (I-LTER) system, interested in monitoring the impacts of global climate change, and the need for plant physiology to be determined accurately on a global scale for dynamic global vegetation models. This resource will also allow student learning of up-to-date methods from protocols online. In some cases there may be a high level of disagreement as to which methods are best or most workable, but the wiki process will re-focus discussion on further understanding of methods, which could lead to subsequent discoveries as well as quickly and efficiently determining best practices.

The Beta Version of PrometheusWiki is now available to access online at: http://www.publish.csiro.au/prometheuswiki/tiki-index.php

Please note the wiki is still under development and access to parts of the site is currently restricted to site Editors.

Keep an eye out - PrometheusWiki will be formally launched in July 2010!

Last Updated April 2010