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17 - Leaf physiognomy and climate change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2009

Stephen J. Culver
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
Peter F. Rawson
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

A principal driving force for evolutionary change through selection is environmental change. This is borne out by the widespread recognition that the ‘Red Queen World’ (Van Valen, 1973), where competition between organisms is divorced from change in the physical surroundings, is largely a theoretical (but useful) abstraction because the effect of environmental change in the real world is all pervasive. Of all the possible mechanisms for environmental change, those due to climate perturbations are the most universal and persistent. Understanding the pattern and process of climate change is therefore of extreme importance to an understanding of the pattern and process of biotic responses to that change.

Climate change is not only an expression of atmospheric phenomena: it is intimately linked to variations in sea level, ocean circulation and tectonics. The bulk of the ocean realm, however, is to a large extent buffered from the short-term (days to weeks) high magnitude fluctuations in temperature, pressure, and fluid flow regimes experienced by non-marine environments that are directly exposed to atmospheric conditions. In terms of magnitude and frequency, climate change is, therefore, most strongly expressed in the terrestrial realm. Here, climatic conditions are recorded at high temporal and spatial resolutions by a variety of features possessed by the plants, animals and sediments present in that environment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biotic Response to Global Change
The Last 145 Million Years
, pp. 244 - 264
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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