Abstract
A process based model integrating the effects of UV‐B radiation to molecular level processes and their consequences to whole plant growth and development was developed from key parameters in the published literature. Model simulations showed that UV‐B radiation induced changes in plant metabolic and/or photosynthesis rates can result in plant growth inhibitions. The costs of effective epidermal UV‐B radiation absorptive compounds did not result in any significant changes in plant growth, but any associated metabolic costs effectively reduced the potential plant biomass. The model showed significant interactions between UV‐B radiation effects and temperature and any factor leading to inhibition of photosynthetic production or plant growth during the midday, but the effects were not cumulative for all factors. Vegetative growth were significantly delayed in species that do not exhibit reproductive cycles during a growing season, but vegetative growth and reproductive yield in species completing their life cycle in one growing season did not appear to be delayed more than 2–5 days, probably within the natural variability of the life cycles for many species. This is the first model to integrate the effects of increased UV‐B radiation through molecular level processes and their consequences to whole plant growth and development.
Highlights
Integration among various ecological processes and scaling among various levels of organization are inherent in ecology and pose major challenges in understanding the consequences of global environmental problems (Levin 1992)
We examined a variety of questions that would be difficult to approach through experimental research, including: (1) What are the most advantageous strategies for the plant to optimize its growth and potential fitness? (2) Does UV-B radiation interact with other environmental factors? (3) What is the effect of midday photosynthetic depression?
Our model is the first to integrate the effects of increased UV-B radiation through molecular level processes and their consequences to whole plant growth and development
Summary
Integration among various ecological processes and scaling among various levels of organization are inherent in ecology and pose major challenges in understanding the consequences of global environmental problems (Levin 1992). Research on integrating ecological levels has been done (Clark 1990), many ecological studies are still shortterm and small-scale experiments. Such experiments have limited ecological relevance as more factors are added and the scale is increased (Carpenter 1996; Schindler 1998), and fail in testing the major theories about the natural world (Weiner 1995). Technical difficulties limited experimental research mostly to individual and subindividual plant levels (DeLucia et al 2001), and cannot test how the potential UV-B induced changes may be amplified across higher ecological scales and trophic levels (Caldwell et al 1998; Warren et al 2002), or the potential interactions between stratospheric ozone depletion and global warming (Hartman et al 2000; United Nations Environment Programme, 2012)
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