MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4408921840 · doi:10.1111/nph.70057

<scp>C<sub>4</sub></scp> photosynthesis, trait spectra, and the fast‐efficient phenotype

2025· review· en· W4408921840 on OpenAlexaff
Russell K. Monson, Shuai Li, Elizabeth A. Ainsworth, Yuzhen Fan, John E. Hodge, Alan K. Knapp, Andrew D. B. Leakey, Danica Lombardozzi, Sasha C. Reed, Rowan F. Sage, Melinda D. Smith, Nicholas G. Smith, Christopher J. Still, Danielle A. Way

Bibliographic record

VenueNew Phytologist · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicPhotosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms
Canadian institutionsWestern UniversityUniversity of Toronto
FundersU.S. Department of Energy
KeywordsTraitContext (archaeology)PhotosynthesisBiologyEcosystemAdaptation (eye)Biomass (ecology)EcologyResource Acquisition Is InitializationComputer scienceResource allocationBotanyNeuroscience

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Summary It has been 60 years since the discovery of C 4 photosynthesis, an event that rewrote our understanding of plant adaptation, ecosystem responses to global change, and global food security. Despite six decades of research, one aspect of C 4 photosynthesis that remains poorly understood is how the pathway fits into the broader context of adaptive trait spectra, which form our modern view of functional trait ecology. The C 4 CO 2 ‐concentrating mechanism supports a general C 4 plant phenotype capable of fast growth and high resource‐use efficiencies. The fast‐efficient C 4 phenotype has the potential to operate at high productivity rates, while allowing for less biomass allocation to root production and nutrient acquisition, thereby providing opportunities for the evolution of novel trait covariances and the exploitation of new ecological niches. We propose the placement of the C 4 fast‐efficient phenotype near the acquisitive pole of the world‐wide leaf economic spectrum, but with a pathway‐specific span of trait space, wherein selection shapes both acquisitive and conservative adaptive strategies. A trait‐based perspective of C 4 photosynthesis will open new paths to crop improvement, global biogeochemical modeling, the management of invasive species, and the restoration of disturbed ecosystems, particularly in grasslands.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.010

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.002
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.002

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.

Opus teacher head0.014
GPT teacher head0.258
Teacher spread0.245 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreReview

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".

Quick stats

Citations18
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueNew PhytologistSame topicPhotosynthetic Processes and MechanismsFrench-language works237,207