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Role of carbon allocation efficiency in the temperature dependence of autotroph growth rates

Bernardo García-Carreras,Sofía Sal,D. Padfield,D. Kontopoulos,Elvire Bestion,C. Schaum,G. Yvon‐Durocher,S. Pawar

Published 2018 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ABSTRACT

Significance To predict how plant growth rate will respond to temperature requires understanding how temperature drives the underlying metabolic rates. Although past studies have considered the temperature dependences of photosynthesis and respiration rates underlying growth, they have largely overlooked the temperature dependence of carbon allocation efficiency. By combining a mathematical model that links exponential growth rate of a population of photosynthetic cells to photosynthesis, respiration, and carbon allocation; to an experiment on a freshwater alga; and to a database covering a wide range of taxa, we show that allocation efficiency is crucial for predicting how growth rates will respond to temperature change across aquatic and terrestrial autotrophs, at both short and long (evolutionary) timescales. Relating the temperature dependence of photosynthetic biomass production to underlying metabolic rates in autotrophs is crucial for predicting the effects of climatic temperature fluctuations on the carbon balance of ecosystems. We present a mathematical model that links thermal performance curves (TPCs) of photosynthesis, respiration, and carbon allocation efficiency to the exponential growth rate of a population of photosynthetic autotroph cells. Using experiments with the green alga, Chlorella vulgaris, we apply the model to show that the temperature dependence of carbon allocation efficiency is key to understanding responses of growth rates to warming at both ecological and longer-term evolutionary timescales. Finally, we assemble a dataset of multiple terrestrial and aquatic autotroph species to show that the effects of temperature-dependent carbon allocation efficiency on potential growth rate TPCs are expected to be consistent across taxa. In particular, both the thermal sensitivity and the optimal temperature of growth rates are expected to change significantly due to temperature dependence of carbon allocation efficiency alone. Our study provides a foundation for understanding how the temperature dependence of carbon allocation determines how population growth rates respond to temperature.

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