Plants in Alpine Regions Cell Physiology of Adaption and Survival St
This book brings together experts from different fields, who used a broad spectrum of methods to investigate the physiological and cellular adaptation of alpine plants from the tree line to the upper limits. Some articles link alpine plant physiology with
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€tz Cornelius Lu Editor
Plants in Alpine Regions Cell Physiology of Adaption and Survival Strategies
SpringerWienNewYork
Editor Prof. Dr. Cornelius L€utz University of Innsbruck Faculty of Life Sciences Institute of Botany Sternwartestr. 15 6020 Innsbruck Austria [email protected]
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machines or similar means, and storage in data banks. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. # 2012 Springer-Verlag/Wien SpringerWienNewYork is a part of Springer Science+Business Media springer.at/ Cover illustrations: upper left: alpine Oxyria digyna; lower left: antarctic Deschampsia antarctica prepared for measurements; right: Central Alps, Tyrol. Typesetting: SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper SPIN: 12767885 With 112 Figures Library of Congress Control Number: 2011938122 ISBN 978-3-7091-0135-3 DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-0136-0 SpringerWienNewYork
e-ISBN 978-3-7091-0136-0
Preface
Plants inhabiting high alpine and nival zones are considered as living in an extreme environment. Extreme environments have been attractive for explorers for centuries, and nowadays they also attract tourists. Fortunately biological science is becoming increasingly aware that these remote habitats provide challenging questions that will help to understand the limits of life functions. Biota of cold, extreme environments have been brought closer to the scientific community and to the public by international activities such as the International Year of the Mountains (2002) or the International Polar Year (2007–2009). While it is indispensable to use model plants such as Chlorella, Physicomitrella, Hordeum or Arabidopsis to follow single metabolic processes and pathways or fluxes, species from remote locations are difficult to use as model organisms: often they do not grow in culture or they change their metabolism completely under artificial growth. Plants at the margins of life developed a broad range of adaptation and survival strategies during evolution. These are best studied with species growing in extreme environments – extreme firstly for the researcher, who tries to measure life functions in the field and to harvest samples for later studies in the home laboratory. This has been experienced by an increasing number of scientists working in the fields of geobotany, plant ecophysiology and ecology. Their work has prepared the conditions that allow different aspects in cell physiology of plants from cold environments (the same holds for high temperature biota e.g. of deserts, volcanoes) to be studied by state-of-the-art methods and the results to be interpre
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