Special Issue Editor(s)
Xavier Picó, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Spain
[email protected]
Richard Abbott, University of St Andrews, UK
[email protected]
Luis Daniel Llambi, University of the Andes, Venezuela
[email protected]
Nishi Rajakaruna, California Polytechnic State University, USA
[email protected]
Alexander Papadopulos, Bangor University, UK
[email protected]
Laszlo Nagy, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
[email protected]
Our planet is undergoing major environmental change due largely to climate warming and land use alteration. This is causing many plants to experience conditions harsher than those they are well adapted to. In response, plants can modify their distribution ranges, become rapidly adapted to the new environmental conditions or go extinct locally. For this reason, it is important to broaden our understanding of how plants evolve and interact in existing extreme environments, providing clues as to how plant communities may develop in the near future.
The goal of this special issue is to bring together observational, experimental and theoretical studies on the ecology and evolution of plants in extreme environments.
In this special issue, we expect to cover a wide array of major extreme environments (e.g., from semi- to hyper-arid deserts, high elevations, Arctic/Antarctic regions) and environments that may be called extreme due to particular local characteristics, such as soil types (e.g., saline, serpentine, gypsum, heavy metal contamination) and those affected by recurrent major perturbations (e.g. fires, floods).
We welcome submissions on any plant taxon (including ferns, lichens and algae), from any biogeographical region and ecological level (i.e., population, community or ecosystem).
All manuscripts should highlight the factors that make their study environments extreme.
We expect contributions to be hypothesis-driven, to develop their theoretical frameworks in depth and to evaluate future research directions.
