Effect of drought on plant physiology, disease susceptibility and insect herbivory in rainforest saplings
Main Article Content
Keywords
throughfall infrastructure, reduced rainfall, in situ, natural ecosystems, severity, pathogens, herbivory
Abstract
Two rainforest canopy tree species were sampled as saplings in June of 2022 in a cross-sectional study to compare the effect of drought on physiological performance, insect herbivory and leaf disease damage. Throughfall infrastructure was utilised to simulate drought in field conditions. A strong effect of drought was found across all physiological measures, with drought being correlated with lower leaf chlorophyll content, stomatal conductance, and photosystem 2 efficiency. Plant health was assessed at the leaf-level using a 0-5 visual scale. No significant effect of drought on insect herbivory of disease damage was found, except for in Argyrodendron peralatum. Correlation of physiological performance and individual health assessments revealed several trends in susceptibility. Chlorophyll content was found to be more steeply correlated to insect damage severity in drought treatments than in control treatments, the effect of stomatal water conductance was investigated, and reduction in efficiency of photosystem 2 was correlated to higher severity of affliction. Mechanisms behind trends in susceptibility were investigated but the inference power of this study was limited by the cross-sectional nature. A longitudinal study tracking the progression of plant health metrics, physiological performance, and development was suggested for future research in conjunction with studies that analyse drought impact on invertebrate communities.
Article Sidebar
Article Details
It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce any work still under copyright in their upcoming submissions. Copyright can apply to any original work of art or text and could include such items as: textual works; artistic works; sound recordings; cinematograph films; broadcasts; web content; maps; photographs; and architectural drawings.
More information regarding copyright can be found on the Australian Copyright Council website.
Generally in academic work, most work is attributed by acknowledging the original source via citations. However, this does not allow authors to reuse other's work without permission, particularly if they are reusing a 'substantial' part of a work.
In practice, whilst this could occur across a range of work types, it is most likely to occur with the use of images, graphs and tables.
If a submission contains copyrighted images from other published sources, permission will be needed before the image can be used in a published article.
- once the article has been accepted, contact the authors or journal to request permission
- provide a copy of the approval email/form
If all images, graphs, and tables are the author’s own creation, authors will need to explain somewhere in the document that no permissions were necessary as the figures/tables are original and were created by the author.