Corrigendum: The energetic and carbon economic origins of leaf thermoregulation

Though evaporation from plant leaves drives transpiration, it also results in loss of water. Because water is critical for photosynthetic reactions and other cellular processes, evolutionary pressures on plants in different environments have driven the acquisition of adaptations that reduce water loss.

The human body has a sophisticated thermoregulation system that employs negative feedback mechanisms to maintain an optimal core temperature. When the core temperature drops, peripheral and central thermoreceptors send signals to the hypothalamus, activating the heat-promoting center. This center triggers several responses aimed at increasing the core temperature. First, vasoconstriction reduces the flow of warm blood from internal organs to the skin so that the heat is not lost from the skin,...

Every organism has an optimum temperature range within which healthy growth and physiological functioning can occur. At the ends of this range, there will be a minimum and maximum temperature that interrupt biological processes.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. This can be demonstrated within a classic food web where light energy from the sun is harnessed as radiant energy by plants, converted into chemical energy, and stored as complex carbohydrates. The vegetation is then consumed by animals and during the digestion process, the sugars release energy as heat. The sugars also produce chemical energy that either gets used up doing work, stored in...

During photosynthesis, plants acquire the necessary carbon dioxide and release the produced oxygen back into the atmosphere. Openings in the epidermis of plant leaves is the site of this exchange of gasses. A single opening is called a stoma—derived from the Greek word for “mouth.” Stomata open and close in response to a variety of environmental cues.

Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of survivorship and reproductive strategies, including semelparity and iteroparity. Semelparous species, like annual plants, have only one reproductive episode in their lifetimes and consequently have short lifespans. Iteroparous species, by contrast, have many reproductive events during their lifetimes but have relatively few offspring. These two...