Annikki Mäkelä 
,
Thomas J. Givnish,
Frank Berninger,
Thomas N. Buckley,
Graham D. Farquhar,
Pertti Hari
Challenges and opportunities of the optimality approach in plant ecology
Mäkelä A., Givnish T. J., Berninger F., Buckley T. N., Farquhar G. D., Hari P. (2002). Challenges and opportunities of the optimality approach in plant ecology. Silva Fennica vol. 36 no. 3 article id 528. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.528
Abstract
A meeting was held in Hyytiälä, Finland 10–12 April 2000 to assess critically the current challenges and limitations of the optimality approach in plant ecophysiology and botany. This article summarises the general discussions and views of the participants on the use of optimisation models as tools in plant ecophysiological research. A general framework of the evolutionary optimisation problem is sketched with a review of applications, typically involved with balanced regulation between parallel processes. The usefulness and limitations of the approach are discussed in terms of published examples, with special reference to model testing. We conclude that, regardless of inevitable problems of model formulation, wider application of the optimality approach could provide a step forward in plant ecophysiology. A major role of evolutionary theory in this process is simply the formulation of testable hypotheses, the evaluation of which can lead to important advances in our ecophysiological understanding and predictive ability.
Keywords
models;
acclimation;
adaptation;
optimisation;
evolution;
hypotheses;
evaluation
Received 4 July 2001 Accepted 8 August 2002 Published 31 December 2002
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