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How the tallest tropical trees have evolved to pump water to top branches
If you placed the leaves of all plants side-by-side, they would cover the surface of the Earth. And beneath each of those leaves there would be hundreds of microscopic conduits supporting them mechanically, keeping them hydrated and supplied with nutrients. Together those conduits form the water transport system of plants and its evolution was the most important event in the past 550 million years. The plant water transport system is 60% of all living biomass and returns 70% of all rainfall back to the atmosphere. Its evolution changed every single geomorphological, biochemical and climatic process on the planet. How the water transport system of tropical plants modulate those processes, from nano-physiology to ecosystem ecology and large-scale biogeochemistry, is the focus of my research.
About the Speaker
Dr Paulo Bittencourt is a Tropical Plant Ecologist focused on understanding how plants and water drive the ecology, evolution and function of tropical environments. His work is built upon an in-depth understanding of plant ecophysiology and the development of new sensor technologies, allowing him to study how plants shape our planet.