EcoFoG - WooDiversity

What ?

General presentation :

The WOODIVERSITY project is an interdisciplinary research program supported by the french Research National Agency (ANR) for 3 years (2006-2008). It sets out to understand how the diversity of wood structures and properties allows woody plants, including different life forms, to develop a diversity of growth strategies during regeneration stages (seedlings, saplings and juveniles) in a tropical rainforest understorey characterized by a strong competition for light and a huge diversity of functional types of tropical woody plants.

The project links different disciplines – wood mechanics and structural analysis, ecophysiology of biophysical (hydraulic and biomechanical) processes, analysis of the genetic control of physiological processes associated to cambial growth and reactions to stress, ecology of communities and analysis of plant strategies in tropical forest ecosystems - through five french teams (lien sur home page), associated to some foreign partners (Dr M.T.Tyree, Plant biomechanics group Freibourg, University of Manchester , Biomaterial physics group Nagoya)

Traits related to wood hydraulic and mechanical performances will be defined from measurements at different scales (from the whole organism to wood cell wall chemical components) and biophysical models of their functional significance. A large range of unconventional wood properties will be investigated as trade offs at different scales contribute to maintain all the performances at a high level. Then their variations will be studied among the diversity of woody plant species, comparing life forms (self supporting tree, climbers, epiphytes) and trees from different functional groups. Within-species wood variations during ontogeny and with environmental conditions, as well as physiological processes involved in wood adaptations to hydraulic and mechanical constraints, are assumed to play a key role in growth strategies.
Therefore, we propose to check these hypotheses; the ecological significance of these factors in natural conditions will be studied, as well as the inter-species variations of physiological processes, including the genetic variations of response and perception to biomechanical constraints, using recent advances in tree genomics.

Organisation of the project :
The project is organised into 6 working packages :

Results and deliverables

Expected results concern i) the definition of biophysical traits related to biophysical strategies, with improved theoretical and experimental methods, ii) some answers to ecological questions about trade offs between hydraulic and mechanical performances in the particular context of tropical rainforests, iii) a study of the genetic bases of wood plasticity through the quantification of the polymorphism of mechano-perceptive genes in tropical species, iv) a set of data on biophysical traits – measured for the needs of the previous questions - included in a more general data-base of tropical tree traits.

Tableau : List of the deliverables of the project

1	Title , responsible	Months	2	3
D1.1	Standardised procedures to measure wood characteristics, stem characteristics and tree growth i) wood and stem prestresses ii) wood density and elastic properties iii) wood anatomy and ultrastructure iv) stem shape changes v) hydraulic properties of stems Bruno Clair	5	Me	Int
D1.2	Improved techniques to measure : i) wood visco-elastic properties ii) mechanical properties of the cell wall by atomic force microscopy iii) continuous radial growth of trees iv) strain field during hygrothermal recovery and drying shrinkage Bruno Clair	19	Eq + Me	Int + Pu
D1.3	Description of models inputs and outputs i) model computing stem critical height and safety factor ii) model to simulate gravitropic responses iii) model predicting wood properties at macro level using micro level parameters Catherine Coutand (i and ii), Joseph Gril (iii)	5	So	Int
D2	Identification of a list of species of interest to explore the maximal range of wood plasticity Bernard Thibaut	5	Da	Int
D3.1	List of wood characteristics (elastic modulus, density…etc) and stem geometry parameters with their contribution to stem functionality during ontogeny and between highly variable growth forms. Post doc	24	Da + Si	Int+ Pu
D3.2	List of wood characteristics and stem geometry parameters affected by interactions between light microclimate, ontogeny and mechanical support Nick Rowe	19	Da	Int+ Pu
D3.3	Classification of species for their mechanical disturbance versus gravity measured by their leaning and for their amount of reaction wood Meriem Fournier	19	Da	Int+ Pu
D3.4	Classification of species for hydraulic specific conductance and cavitation vulnerability Melvin T. Tyree	19	Da	Int+ Pu
D3.5	Clustering of species against their hydraulic and mechanical performances and possible trade-offs Meriem Fournier	24	Da	Int+ Pu
D3.6	Identification of links between wood and stems structures and mechanical and hydraulic performances Nick Rowe	25	Re	Int
D4.1	Classification of species for their balance between level of prestresses, radial growth, eccentricity and for their gravitropic efficiency Gaelle Jaouen	11	Da + Si	Int+Pu
D4.2	Classification of species for their thigmomorphogenetic sensitivity (modification of stem growth and wood properties) Catherine Coutand	25	Da	Int+ Pu
D4.3	Identification of wood hydraulic characteristics affected by thigmomorphogenesis and gravitropism Post doc	30	Da	Int
D4.4	Assessment of environment control on strategies (plasticity) Catherine Coutand	33	Re	Int
D5.1	List of candidates genes implicated in mechano-perception Patricia Drevet	14	Da+ Ge	Int+ Pu
D5.2	Sequences of the candidates genes homologs in tropical species Post Doc	21	Da+ Ge	Int+ Pu
D5.3	Quantification of the polymorphism of mechano-perceptive genes in tropical species Ivan Scotti	30	Da	Int+Pu
D5.4	Genetic bases of biomechanical strategies and of plasticity of wood properties Ivan Scotti	33	Re	Int
D6.1	Identification and description of biophysical strategies, list of relevant wood traits, information of variation of candidate genes sequences towards the connection of functional and evolutionary genetics for tropical forest trees Bruno Moulia	35	Re	Int+ Pu
D6.2	Mariwenn database enriched with new entities for biophysical strategies, new wood and stem traits and genes Eric Marcon	36	Da	Int

1 Deliverables are numbered by the number of task they issued from.
2 Codes used to describe the nature of deliverables
Pu = publication
Int = restricted to the members of the project
3 Codes used to describe the level of dissemination of deliverables
Eq = Equipment
Da = Data set
Db = Data Base
Ge=Gene sequence
Me = Methodology
Re = Report
Si = simulation
So = Software

Dernière mise à jour le 23-Déc-2007