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Project

Unraveling winter sleep to understand spring reactivation: improved understanding of leaf out phenology in temperate deciduous trees by gaining insight in environmental controls of bud dormancy.

By affecting the uptake of carbon and the transpiration of water by forests, tree phenology also influences local weather and long-term climate change. Studying spring phenology of temperate trees is thus more than just a biologist's hobby. Despite a wealth of observations of the date that leaves appear in spring, this process is still not fully understood. Leaf out can occur at very different moments in spring, despite similar spring weather. Part of the reason is that spring leaf out is only the end point of an entire winter of bud responses to cold temperatures, to warm temperatures, and to changes in day length. To fully understand the climatic controls over spring phenology, and thus to be able to produce models that can accurately predict future changes in spring phenology, insight is needed into what happens during the long winter, when buds are apparently asleep. This project focuses on just that: what happens during the bud's resting phase that makes them more or less responsive to warmer spring temperatures. We will conduct two large experiments in which temperature and day length will be altered, and throughout the entire winter season monitor changes in gene expression, in metabolite concentrations, and in depth of dormancy. The ultimate aim is to advance insight in spring phenology, but also to identify genes or metabolites that could give information on the state of dormancy during winter, and thereby on the bud's sensitivity to spring warming. -
Date:1 Jan 2019 →  31 Dec 2022
Keywords:PHENOLOGY, TREE ECOPHYSIOLOGY, METABOLOMICS, TRANSCRIPTOMICS
Disciplines:Ecophysiology and ecomorphology, Terrestrial ecology, Transcription and translation, Molecular and cell biology not elsewhere classified, Plant ecology
Project type:Collaboration project