Plant Ecophysiology: Linking Pattern and Process—a Review

Introduction The Symposium ‘Plant Ecophysiology: Linking Pattern and Process’ was held as part of the 1995 meeting of the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA). The aim of the Symposium was to highlight work that examined mechanisms underlying ecological patterns and linked them to ecological and/or evolutionary processes. Another aim was to expose ecologists to the methods available to examine the mechanistic and functional basis of the organisms and systems under study. Much early ecological research has been concerned with the description and classification of vegetation types, with relatively little effort devoted to understanding the underlying processes that determined distribution. A more quantitative approach based on knowledge of the underlying mechanisms can further improve understanding of systems. This was amply demonstrated in a Symposium on the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on vegetation dynamics, also held in conjunction with an ESA meeting (see papers in Australian Journal of Botany, Volume 40(2)). Recent technological advances have stimulated rapid progress in the field of ecophysiology and hence an increasing process-based understanding is developing. The 1995 Symposium was seen as an opportunity to highlight more recent work in what is a relatively new field in Australia (albeit a well-established field in Europe and America), especially in situ studies and research from relatively little studied areas like northern Australia. The response to the Symposium was encouraging, with 25 spoken papers and poster-papers presented. In this paper, some of the unifying aspects of the papers presented in the symposium are drawn together, and placed in the context of likely future developments in ecophysiology in Australia. Based on this analysis, future directions and gaps are identified.