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Dew-induced transpiration suppression impacts the water and isotope balances of Colocasia leaves

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Abstract

Foliar uptake of water from the surface of leaves is common when rainfall is scarce and non-meteoric water such as dew or fog is more abundant. However, many species in more mesic environments have hydrophobic leaves that do not allow the plant to uptake water. Unlike foliar uptake, all species can benefit from dew- or fog-induced transpiration suppression, but despite its ubiquity, transpiration suppression has so far never been quantified. Here, we investigate the effect of dew-induced transpiration suppression on the water balance and the isotope composition of leaves via a series of experiments. Characteristically, hydrophobic leaves of a tropical plant, Colocasia esculenta, are misted with isotopically enriched water to reproduce dew deposition. This species does not uptake water from the surface of its leaves. We measure leaf water isotopes and water potential and find that misted leaves exhibit a higher water potential and a more depleted water isotope composition than dry leaves, suggesting a ∼ 30% decrease in transpiration rate compared to control leaves. We propose three possible mechanisms governing the interaction of water droplets with leaf energy balance: increase in albedo from the presence of dew droplets, decrease in leaf temperature from the evaporation of dew, and local decrease in vapor pressure deficit. Comparing previous studies on foliar uptake to our results, we conclude that transpiration suppression has an effect of similar amplitude, yet opposite sign to foliar uptake on leaf water isotopes.

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Acknowledgments

CGS and KKC acknowledge the financial support of NASA Headquarters under the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program—Grant 14-EARTH14F-241—and of a Mary and Randall Hack’69 Graduate Award and the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Fellowship from the Princeton Environmental Institute. CGS thanks Missy Holbrook and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University for hosting her during part of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi & Kelly K. Caylor

  2. Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Paul P. G. Gauthier

  3. Department of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Kelly K. Caylor

  4. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Kelly K. Caylor

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  1. Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi
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  2. Paul P. G. Gauthier
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  3. Kelly K. Caylor
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CGS, PPGG, and KKC designed the study. CGS collected and analyzed the data. CGS, PPGG, and KKC wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi.

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Communicated by Miquel A Gonzalez-Meler.

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Gerlein-Safdi, C., Gauthier, P.P.G. & Caylor, K.K. Dew-induced transpiration suppression impacts the water and isotope balances of Colocasia leaves. Oecologia 187, 1041–1051 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-018-4199-y

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