CAM photosynthesis in <i>Bulnesia retama</i> (Zygophyllaceae), a non-succulent desert shrub from South America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Bulnesia retama is a drought-deciduous, xerophytic shrub from arid landscapes of South America. In a survey of carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) in specimens from the field, B. retama exhibited less negative values, indicative of CAM or C4 photosynthesis. Here, we investigate whether B. retama is a C4 or CAM plant. METHODS: Gas-exchange responses to intercellular CO2, diurnal gas-exchange profiles, δ13C and dawn vs. afternoon titratable acidity were measured on leaves and stems of watered and droughted B. retama plants. Leaf and stem cross-sections were imaged to determine whether the tissues exhibited succulent CAM or C4 Kranz anatomy. KEY RESULTS: Field-collected stems and fruits of B. retama exhibited δ13C between -16 and -19 ‰. Plants grown in a glasshouse from field-collected seeds had leaf δ13C values near -31 ‰ and stem δ13C values near -28 ‰. The CO2 response of photosynthesis showed that leaves and stems used C3 photosynthesis during the day, while curvature in the nocturnal response of net CO2 assimilation rate (A) in all stems, coupled with slightly positive rates of A at night, indicated modest CAM function. C4 photosynthesis was absent. Succulence was absent in all tissues, although stems exhibited tight packing of the cortical chlorenchyma in a CAM-like manner. Tissue titratable acidity increased at night in droughted stems. CONCLUSIONS: Bulnesia retama is a weak to modest C3 + CAM plant. This is the first report of CAM in the Zygophyllaceae and the first showing that non-succulent, xerophytic shrubs use CAM. CAM alone in B. retama was too limited to explain less negative δ13C in field-collected plants, but combined with effects of low stomatal and mesophyll conductance it could raise δ13C to observed values between -16 and -19 ‰. Modest CAM activity, particularly during severe drought, could enable B. retama to persist in arid habitats of South America.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".