Marisa Nordenstahl

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · CIGEOBIO - Centro de Investigaciones de la Geósfera y la Biósfera

In managed rangelands periods of low primary productivity determine troughs of forage availability, constraining animal production year-round. Although alternative tools to increase forage availability during critical seasons exists, most of them are unaffordable and short-lived in marginal areas. We explore the potential benefits of deciduous tree...

Plant light interception efficiency is a crucial determinant of carbon uptake by individual plants and by vegetation. Our aim was to identify whole‐plant variables that summarize complex crown architecture, which can be used to predict light interception efficiency. We gathered the largest database of digitized plants to date (1831 plants of 124 sp...

Both engineered hydraulic systems and plant hydraulic systems are protected against failure by resistance, reparability, and redundancy. A basic rule of reliability engineering is that the level of independent redundancy should increase with increasing risk of fatal system failure. Here we show that hydraulic systems of plants function as predicted...

Research linking functional traits to competitive ability of coexisting species has largely relied on rectilinear correlations, yielding inconsistent results. Based on concepts borrowed from natural selection theory, we propose that trait–competition relationships can generally correspond to three univariate selection modes: directional (a rectilin...

Explanations of leaf size variation commonly focus on water availability, yet leaf size also varies with latitude and elevation in environments where water is not strongly limiting. We provide the first conclusive test of a prediction of leaf energy balance theory that may explain this pattern: large leaves are more vulnerable to night‐time chillin...

Desert areas represent heterogeneous environments where animals must reproduce under extreme conditions, and where a combination of environmental factors may contribute to trigger or inhibit reproduction. Microcavia australis is a caviomorph rodent that occurs in arid and semiarid habitats of Argentina. We examined how reproductive activity in male...

Forage production in silvopastoral systems of the Flooding Pampa is based on cool season grasses with a relatively asynchronous phenology regarding their accompanying deciduous trees. However, the productivity of cool season grasses in these systems is usually low. The hypothesis of this work is that the low productivity of cool season grasses is c...

Tree establishment can have multiple effects on the production and biodiversity of rangelands. In mixed (C3-C4) grasslands, winter deciduous trees could favor cold-season species in the understory, improving forage availability in the most critical time of the year. Yet, they could also promote local extinctions and invasions, risking native biodiv...