ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Revealing catastrophic failure of leaf networks under stress.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 194 citations in OpenAlex.
- Water Released From Vessel Embolism May Temporarily Halt Further Embolism in Tropical Dipterocarp Trees.Plant, cell & environment · 2026Article
- No evidence of xylem embolism refilling during recovery from drought stress in intact sunflowers.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Article
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- Channel deformations during elastocapillary spreading of gaseous embolisms in biomimetic leaves.Interface focus · 2025Article
- Xylem embolism refilling revealed in stems of a weedy grass.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Spatial and Temporal Freezing Dynamics of Leaves Revealed by Time-Lapse Imaging.Plant, cell & environment · 2025Article
- Shoot hydraulic impairments induced by root waterlogging: Parallels and contrasts with drought.Plant physiology · 2024Article
- Within-leaf variation in embolism resistance is not a rule for compound-leaved angiosperms.American journal of botany · 2024Article
- Embolism propagation inJournal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Extreme functional specialization of fertile leaves in a widespread fern species and its implications on the evolution of reproductive dimorphism.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Exclusion-zone water inside and outside of plant xylem vessels.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The robustness of some Carboniferous fossil leaf venation networks to simulated damage.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- A trade-off between leaf hydraulic efficiency and safety across three xerophytic species in response to increased rock fragment content.Tree physiology · 2024Article
- Hydraulic segmentation explains differences in loss of branch conductance caused by fire.Tree physiology · 2023Article
- Cold temperature and aridity shape the evolution of drought tolerance traits in Tasmanian species of Eucalyptus.Tree physiology · 2023Article
- Combined heat and water stress leads to local xylem failure and tissue damage in pyrethrum flowers.Plant physiology · 2023Article
- Evidence for a trade-off between growth rate and xylem cavitation resistance in Callitris rhomboidea.Tree physiology · 2023Article
- Deadly acceleration in dehydration of Eucalyptus viminalis leaves coincides with high-order vein cavitation.Plant physiology · 2023Article
- Drought response in Arabidopsis displays synergistic coordination between stems and leaves.Journal of experimental botany · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The intricate patterns of veins that adorn the leaves of land plants are among the most important networks in biology. Water flows in these leaf irrigation networks under tension and is vulnerable to embolism-forming cavitations, which cut off water supply, ultimately causing leaf death. Understanding the ways in which plants structure their vein supply network to protect against embolism-induced failure has enormous ecological and evolutionary implications, but until now there has been no way of observing dynamic failure in natural leaf networks. Here we use a new optical method that allows the initiation and spread of embolism bubbles in the leaf network to be visualized. Examining embolism-induced failure of architecturally diverse leaf networks, we found that conservative rules described the progression of hydraulic failure within veins. The most fundamental rule was that within an individual venation network, susceptibility to embolism always increased proportionally with the size of veins, and initial nucleation always occurred in the largest vein. Beyond this general framework, considerable diversity in the pattern of network failure was found between species, related to differences in vein network topology. The highest-risk network was found in a fern species, where single events caused massive disruption to leaf water supply, whereas safer networks in angiosperm leaves contained veins with composite properties, allowing a staged failure of water supply. These results reveal how the size structure of leaf venation is a critical determinant of the spread of embolism damage to leaves during drought.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.