Science at the Shine Dome 2010

New Fellows Seminar

Wednesday 5 May

Professor Mark Westoby FAA
School of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

Mark Westoby obtained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in 1970 and his PhD in wildlife ecology from Utah State University in 1973. He moved to Macquarie University in 1975 to take up a lectureship and is currently a professor in the School of Biological Studies there. His research interests have included grazing behaviour and impact on rangeland vegetation; plant demography, competition, arid zone adaptation; seed dispersal; genetic conflicts of interest between mother plant and seeds; ecological strategies; and climate change. He organises a national postgraduate course in current ecology and evolution research.

Ecological strategies across plant species

Vascular plants are responsible both for the physical architecture and for the energy flow in ecosystems on land. There are about 300,000 species. How can the ecological variation across them be understood, short of studying each species as an individual problem? Some major dimensions of variation are beginning to be understood. For example, a ‘leaf economic spectrum’ accounts for three-quarters of all variation worldwide in several leaf traits. At one end of the spectrum are species with cheaply constructed leaf area, high nutrient concentrations and fast photosynthetic rates, but revenue from their leaf investment accrues over a short lifetime. At the other end are species with lower rates of return but longer leaf life-spans.