Papers by Fabian E . Z . Ercan, PhD
PLOS ONE
Numerous long-term, free-air plant growth facilities currently explore vegetation responses to th... more Numerous long-term, free-air plant growth facilities currently explore vegetation responses to the ongoing climate change in northern latitudes. Open top chamber (OTC) experiments as well as the experimental set-ups with active warming focus on many facets of plant growth and performance, but information on morphological alterations of plant cells is still scarce. Here we compare the effects of in-situ warming on leaf epidermal cell expansion in dwarf birch, Betula nana in Finland, Greenland, and Poland. The localities of the three in-situ warming experiments represent contrasting regions of B. nana distribution, with the sites in Finland and Greenland representing the current main distribution in low and high Arctic, respectively, and the continental site in Poland as a B. nana relict Holocene microrefugium. We quantified the epidermal cell lateral expansion by microscopic analysis of B. nana leaf cuticles. The leaves were produced in paired experimental treatment plots with either...
The Holocene
Cuticle analysis performed on fossil Betula nana (L.) leaves provides a strong proxy to reconstru... more Cuticle analysis performed on fossil Betula nana (L.) leaves provides a strong proxy to reconstruct past growing season thermal properties expressed as growing degree days (GDD5). This proxy is so far available for the dwarf birch only and, therewith, restricted to regions or past periods of subarctic climatic conditions. In this study, we analysed modern leaf samples of mountain birch ( Betula pubescens spp. czerepanovii (N. I. Orlova) Hämet-Ahti), which has a wider temperature range than the dwarf birch B. nana. The strong latitudinal climate gradient over Fennoscandia provides a unique opportunity to track growing season temperature imprints in the epidermis cell morphology of the modern mountain birch. We quantified the GDD5-dependent epidermal cell expansion, expressed as the undulation index (UI), over a 10° latitudinal transect translating to a range from ~1500°C to ~600°C GDD5 in 2016. Our results indicate that even in mountain birch the UI is positively correlated to GDD5 a...
Uploads
Papers by Fabian E . Z . Ercan, PhD