Lucas Damián Gorné

Brock University · Department of Biological Sciences

Most studies assessing rates of phenotypic change focus on population mean trait values, whereas a largely overlooked additional component is changes in population trait variation. Theoretically, eco‐evolutionary dynamics mediated by such changes in trait variation could be as important as those mediated by changes in trait means. To date, however,...

Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...

Ungulate herbivory is a key driver of leaf trait syndromes and defense strategies at the ecological and macroevolutionary levels. Herbivory should also cause short‐term evolution within plant populations, but few studies have experimentally tested this prediction. We set out to experimentally assess the plastic and heritable effects of contemporary...

Wild populations must continuously adapt to environmental changes or they risk extinction. Such adaptations can be measured as phenotypic rates of change and can allow us to predict patterns of contemporary evolutionary change. About two decades ago, a dataset of phenotypic rates of change in wild populations was compiled. Since then, researchers h...

Wild populations must continuously adapt to environmental changes or they risk extinction. Such adaptations can be measured as phenotypic rates of change and can allow us to predict patterns of contemporary evolutionary change. About two decades ago, a dataset of phenotypic rates of change in wild populations was compiled. Since then, researchers h...

Resilience—the capacity of an ecosystem to recover from disturbance—is a popular concept but quantitative empirical studies are still uncommon. This lack of empirical evidence is especially true for semi‐arid ecosystems in the face of the combined and often confounding impacts of land use and climate changes. We designed a methodology to disentangl...

Grasslands are valued by their capacity to store carbon (C) as well as by their livestock production. However, focussing grassland management on one of these characteristics might negatively affect the other. Here, we describe for the first time the amount of C stored in the plant and soil compartments of extensively grazed highland grasslands of c...

Background and Aims The acquisitive-conservative axis of plant ecological strategies results in a pattern of leaf trait covariation that captures the balance between leaf construction costs and plant growth potential. Studies evaluating trait covariation within species are scarcer, and have mostly dealt with variation in response to environmental g...

Qualitative measures of resprouting capacity often fail to capture inter-and intra-species variation, whereas available quantitative methods can be complex and time-consuming, hindering broad-scale comparative studies. Here, we propose two quantitative indices that can be applied in a standard way in different regions. We sampled 1046 plants of 20...

This article is a Commentary on Kazakou et al., 224: 1532–1543.

The amount and rate of phenotypic change at ecological time scales varies widely, but there has not been a comprehensive quantitative synthesis of patterns and causes of such variation for plants. Present knowledge is based predominantly on animals, whose differences with plants in the origin of germ cells and the level of modularity (among others)...

Aim Existing global models to predict standing biomass are based on trees characterized by a single principal stem, well developed in height. However, their use in open woodlands and shrublands, characterized by multistemmed species with substantial crown development, generates a high level of uncertainty in biomass estimates. This limitation led u...

Questions We experimentally studied whether different degrees of vegetation structural complexity, developed under different land‐use regimes, affected the retention of seeds in situ in the semiarid Chaco forest. We sought to answer the following questions: (a) Does vegetation complexity in interaction with climatic conditions affect seed retention...

Even in immortalized cell lines, circadian clocks regulate physiological processes in a time-dependent manner, driving transcriptional and metabolic rhythms, the latter being able to persist without transcription. Circadian rhythm disruptions in modern life (shiftwork, jetlag, etc.) may lead to higher cancer risk. Here, we investigated whether the...

Herbivory is a major structuring force on terrestrial ecosystems, driving the inputs of primary productivity to the whole trophic web. It also modulates primary productivity and the dynamics of matter and energy in the ecosystems by different mechanisms. Also, the plant functional traits related to the resource use strategy that configure the Leaf...

A classic topic in ecology and evolution, phenotypic microevolution of quantitative traits has received renewed attention in the face of rapid global environmental change. However, for plants, synthesis has been hampered by the limited use of standard metrics, which makes it difficult to systematize empirical information. Here we demonstrate the ad...

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Earth is home to a remarkable diversity of plant forms and life histories, yet comparatively few essential trait combinations have proved evolutionarily viable in today’s terrestrial biosphere. By analysing worldwide variation in six major traits critical to growth, survival and reproduction within the largest sample of vascular plant species ever...

The circadian system involves central and peripheral oscillators regulating temporally biochemical processes including lipid metabolism; their disruption leads to severe metabolic diseases (obesity, diabetes, etc). Here, we investigated the temporal regulation of glycerophospholipid (GPL) synthesis in mouse liver, a well-known peripheral oscillator...

Circadian clocks regulate the temporal organization of several biochemical processes including lipid metabolism and their disruption leads to severe metabolic disorders. Immortalized cell lines acting as circadian clocks display daily variations in [32P]-phospholipid labeling; however, the regulation of glycerophospholipid (GPL) synthesis by intern...