Time to introduce myself! Recently, I defended my thesis titled "Patterns and Drivers of Leaf Thermoregulation in Rainforest Trees of the Australian Wet Tropics" where I focused on the role of within-species acclimation and adaptation on leaf temperature. Here’s a little summary of what went on… - ThreadSky

kalimiddleby.bsky.social • 106 days ago

Time to introduce myself! Recently, I defended my thesis titled "Patterns and Drivers of Leaf Thermoregulation in Rainforest Trees of the Australian Wet Tropics" where I focused on the role of within-species acclimation and adaptation on leaf temperature. Here’s a little summary of what went on…

Comments

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

Early in my PhD, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Kristine Crous and others on an insitu leaf warming experiment assessing thermal acclimation of mature trees https://shorturl.at/eJA9Q. This project, among others, revealed that tropical leaves can reach high temperatures https://shorturl.at/W2wIs.

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

After this, most of my time/life was spent in the forest measuring heat tolerance & leaf traits across elevation gradients. This was used to paramaterise a leaf energy balance model to predict leaf-air temperature variation, & combined with genomic data to assess local adaptation https://shorturl.at/lDr2U

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

Although intraspecific variation led to enhanced leaf cooling at warmer sites for some species - this was not always the case. Diverse species thermoregulation strategies were also observed when comparing lowland vs upland origin trees grown in a provenance trial for 2 years https://shorturl.at/sjdtV

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

Temperature and vapour pressure deficit are highly correlated, complicating efforts to assess their impact on trait variation. I disentangled the effects of these variables on sapling growth, physiology, and leaf traits in a glasshouse experiment https://shorturl.at/kb87b @newphyt.bsky.social

lehmannmm.bsky.social•105 days ago

Yeah, nice, we had a similar experiment some years ago, still need to write down another tree isotope paper ;) If interested
@kalimiddleby.bsky.social, we have some cool equipment at WSL, which enabled us to unravel temp and vpd responses, published also in @newphyt.bsky.social

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•105 days ago

I remember that paper - I was actually speaking with Lucas about it recently, definitely have some ideas that could be fun to explore!

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

To see how physiological and morphological acclimation to treatments affected thermoregulation, I then monitored leaf temperature & water use. Air temperature was ramped up from 18 to 38°C, and VPD was lowered from 4 to 1.5 kPa. This revealed some very complex responses - watch this space!

kalimiddleby.bsky.social•106 days ago

Key finding? Intraspecific variation in leaf traits plays a crucial role in preventing exposure to damaging temperatures. However, broader assessments across more species are needed to determine whether patterns emerge across phylogeny, functional types, or biomes.

Reach out if you’d like to chat!

olivierjlmanzi.bsky.social•105 days ago

Congs Kali

princessfluffybutt.bsky.social•105 days ago

Great job 😃

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply