Christopher Traiser

University of Tuebingen | EKU Tübingen · Department of Geosciences

In this contribution, the diversity of functional leaf architecture and its association with climate is studied for extant woody dicot species of North America and Europe/South West Asia. The results are compared to fossil leaves of seventeen locations in Central Europe ranging from the Paleogene to Neogene. Four functional leaf traits, lobation, m...

The Arctic forests of the Eocene, which thrived under elevated CO2, a temperate climate, high precipitation and annually extremely different daylengths, represent a quite spectacular no‐analogue habitat of Earth's greenhouse past. The aim of this study was to improve our understanding of the ecophysiology of Arctic broad‐leaved deciduous forests of...

Trees are the fundamental element of forest ecosystems, made possible by their mechanical qualities and their highly sophisticated conductive tissues. The evolution of trees, and thereby the evolution of forests, were ecologically transformative and affected climate and biogeochemical cycles fundamentally. Trees also offer a substantial amount of e...

ABSTRACT Data of climate-sensitive leaf traits, which are usually collected and analyzed for entire fossil leaf assemblages, also include intraspecific responses to environmental conditions. Intraspecific correlations between climate and leaf traits represent plastic responses on the individual level as well as plasticity caused by genetic differen...

Recently two tools, Drudge 1 and 2, were introduced to more easily assess modern vegetation proxies for the fossil record. They are based on three similarities: the Integrated Plant Record (IPR) Similarity assessing the similarity between fossil assemblages and modern vegetation based on the proportion of major zonal angiosperm components; the Taxo...

Leaves are the most appropriate plant organs for studying adaptations to environmental changes as they are the locations of photosynthetic metabolism and thus directly exposed to habitat conditions. Besides investigations on complete assemblages, individual long-ranging species could directly mirror adaptations and changes of leaf traits on environ...

Identifying fossil plants is a key task in palaeobotany. To provide support and easy access to gaining competence in identifying fossil angiosperm leaves, the web platform Digiphyll was developed. Digiphyll is intended to be suitable for teaching as well as for the general public. The ultimate objective is to promote the use of fossil plants in geo...

Morphometric characters of fossil leaves such as size and shape are important and widely used sources for reconstructing palaeoenvironments. Various tools, including CLAMP or Leaf Margin Analysis, utilize leaf traits as input parameters for estimating palaeoclimate, mostly based on correlations between traits and climate parameters of extant plants...

Numerous data based on extant vegetation reveal global patterns of relationships between functional leaf traits and climate. Leaf life span (LLS), i.e. evergreen vs. deciduous leaves, represents a central parameter linking functional traits related to the global leaf economics spectrum. Paleogene climate transitions are therefore expected to be ref...

Fossil angiosperm leaves are important study objects in palaeobotany and provide crucial information on plant evolution, the distribution of taxa in space and time and changes in vegetation structure. Furthermore, numerous morphological and anatomical traits of angiosperm leaves show correlations with climate which renders fossil angiosperm leaves...

The BiNHum project is a collective effort of five natural history museums and research collections of the Humboldt-Ring in Germany to collect, centralize and publish collection data in a unified web portal. The portal and the underlying data workflows provide an extensive set of tools to refine and enrich collection data from various sources. It pr...

Broad-scale analysis of interspecific trait variation is a fundamental approach in comparative ecology to investigate general species–environment relationships, but inferences from environmental and phylogenetic signals are still controversially discussed. However, in palaeoenvironmental research trait variation of fossil floras is often mainly att...

Plant foliage plants provides a wealth of morphometric properties that are influenced by the environment. It therefore represents a valuable source of information for ecological and climatological research. Numerous important and famous fossil floras showing well preserved morphometric leaf traits with high research potential are housed in various...

BiNHum (http://wiki.binhum.net) is a project of five natural history museums and research collections representing the Humboldt-Ring: the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (SMNK), the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart (SMNS), the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn (ZFMK), the Bavarian Natural History Collections in...

Background and AimsThe large distance between peripheral leaf regions and the petiole in large leaves is expected to cause stronger negative water potentials at the leaf apex and marginal zones compared with more central or basal leaf regions. Leaf zone-specific differences in water supply and/or gas exchange may therefore be anticipated. In this s...

Background: Broad-scale analysis of interspecific trait variation is a fundamental approach in comparative ecology to investigate general species-environment relationships, but inferences from environmental and phylogenetic signals are still controversially discussed. Aim: To analyse in a global study of the genus Pinus the interspecific variation...

To analyse in a global study of the genus Pinus the interspecific variation of morphological traits with latitude as a surrogate of broad-scale environmental changes, and to compare latitudinal trait correlations with biogeographic, environmental, and phylogenetic signals in trait variation. Based on native range maps of 103 Pinus species, the lati...

Wettability and retention capacity of leaf surfaces are parameters that contribute to interception of rain, fog or dew by forest canopies. Contrary to common expectation, hydrophobicity or wettability of a leaf do not dictate the stickiness of drops to leaves. Crucial for the adhesion of drops is the contact angle hysteresis, the difference between...

Detailed information about global distributions of plants is fundamental for various research projects in plant systematics, palaeo ecology and palaeo climatology. Unfortunately, such information has not yet been publically available in an user-friendly manner. To remedy this, Chorotree has been set up as an data store and information system for wo...

For various plants and animals, the accumulation of fog or dew droplets constitutes an essential part of their water supply. Understanding how water droplets deposited by fog or dew events interact with plant or animal surfaces is essential for gaining insight into the functionality of these surfaces. Besides being interesting within the realm of b...

For 21 European leaf-floras (with a focus on Central Europe), which span a stratigraphic range from the Late Eocene to the Pliocene, paleoclimate estimates have been calculated using five different quantitative techniques: (a) leaf margin analysis (LMA1), using a regression model based on data from East Asia, (b) the multivariate Climate Leaf Analy...

Physiognomic characters of fossil angiosperm leaf assemblages are believed to represent suitable proxies for palaeoenvironment, and particularly for palaeoclimatic reconstruction. To analyse past environments in Europe, a recently developed approach (ELPA: European Leaf Physiognomic Approach) is used to examine the relationship between angiosperm l...

Since modern Arctic regions are characterized by an icehouse climate no modern vegetation type exists that is comparable to the early Cainozoic vegetation of high latitudes. In addition, many of the plant taxa reported from the early Cainozoic of Arctic areas cannot currently be placed within extant taxa below the rank of families. This makes it di...

We present a detailed palaeoclimate analysis of the Middle Miocene (uppermost Badenian–lowermost Sarmatian) Schrotzburg locality in S Germany, based on the fossil macro- and micro-flora, using four different methods for the estimation of palaeoclimate parameters: the coexistence approach (CA), leaf margin analysis (LMA), the Climate-Leaf Analysis M...

European Leaf Physiognomic Approach ELPA: (1) Grid data set of environmental and ecological parameters; (2) Grid data set of the leaf physiognomic composition of the extant European hardwood vegetation; (3) Leaf physiognomic character scores of 108 European hardwoods. Physiognomic traits of plant leaves such as size, shape or margin are decisively...

Data from PANGAEA related to: Traiser, Christopher; Uhl, Dieter; Klotz, Stefan; Mosbrugger, Volker (2007): Leaf physiognomy and palaeoenvironmental estimates - an alternative technique based on an European calibration. Acta Palaeobotanica, 47(1), 183-201, hdl:10013/epic.44366.d366

Data from PANGAEA related to: Traiser, Christopher; Uhl, Dieter; Klotz, Stefan; Mosbrugger, Volker (2007): Leaf physiognomy and palaeoenvironmental estimates - an alternative technique based on an European calibration. Acta Palaeobotanica, 47(1), 183-201, hdl:10013/epic.44366.d366

Data from PANGAEA related to: Traiser, Christopher; Uhl, Dieter; Klotz, Stefan; Mosbrugger, Volker (2007): Leaf physiognomy and palaeoenvironmental estimates - an alternative technique based on an European calibration. Acta Palaeobotanica, 47(1), 183-201, hdl:10013/epic.44366.d366

We present a detailed palaeoclimate analysis of the Middle Miocene (uppermost Badenian-lowermost Sarmatian) Schrotzburg locality in S Germany, based on the fossil macro- and micro-flora, using four different methods for the estimation of palaeoclimate parameters: the coexistence approach (CA), leaf margin analysis (LMA), the Climate-Leaf Analysis M...

Leaf physiognomic traits vary predictably along climatic and environmental gradients. The relationships between leaf physiognomy and climate have been investigated on different continents, but so far an investigation based on European vegetation has been missing. A grid data set (0.5 degrees x 0.5 degrees latitude/longitude) has been compiled in or...

http://hdl.handle.net/10900/48688 Physiognomic traits of plant leaves such as size, shape or margin are decisively affected by the prevailing environmental conditions of the plant habitat. On the other hand, if a relationship between environment and leaf physiognomy can be shown to exist, vegetation represents a proxy for environmental conditions....

Acht Lonicera-Arten wurden biomechanisch und funktionsanatomisch untersucht. Hierbei wurden Arten ausgewählt, die aus verschiedenen Untergattungen bzw. Sektionen der Gattung Lonicera stammen. Analysiert wurden Arten mit selbsttragend strauchiger Wuchsform (L. nigra), lianenartig windender Wuchsform (L. periclymenum, L. alseuosmoides, L. reticulata)...

The genus Lonicera (Caprifoliaceae) is characterised by the occurrence of different growth habits among its various species. The eight tested species are currently placed in different systematic subdivisions of the genus Lonicera. The plants have been chosen to cover the entire range of growth habits found in the genus Lonicera. According to our fu...