The Photosynthetic Pathways of Plant Species Surveyed in TERN Ecosystem Surveillance Plots
<p> This data set provides the photosynthetic pathways for 4832 species recorded across plots surveyed by Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) between 2011 and May 2022 (inclusive). TERN survey plots are 1 ha (100 x 100 m) permanently established sites located in a homogeneous area of terrestrial vegetation. At each plot, TERN survey teams record vegetation composition and structural characteristics and collect a range of plant samples using a point-intercept method. Species were assigned a photosynthetic pathway using literature and carbon stable isotope analysis of bulk tissue collected by TERN at the survey plots. </p><p>The data set is comprised of one data table that contains a list of each species and its photosynthetic pathway, and one metadata file which provides a data descriptor that defines data values and a list of all the peer-reviewed sources used to create this data set. </p> Version 1 (2020) included the photosynthetic pathways of 2428 species recorded across TERN plots surveyed between 2011 and 2017 (inclusive) and was originally published in 2020. Key updates in version 2 (2024) include an expanded species list and updated taxonomy were applicable </p>
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2020-10-13
- Date (Publication)
- 2020-11-05
- Date (Revision)
- 2024-12-16
- Edition
- 2.0
Identifier
Publisher
Author
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Munroe, Samantha ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
Sprigg Geobiology Centre, University of Adelaide - McInerney, Francesca ()
259 North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australa, 5000, Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
5000
Australia
Co-author
Sprigg Geobiology Centre, University of Adelaide - Andrae, Jake ()
259 North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australa, 5000, Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
5000
Australia
Co-author
CSIRO Agriculture and Food - Welti, Nina ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Guerin, Greg ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Leitch, Emrys (Senior Botanist and Field Lead)
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
Sprigg Geobiology Centre, University of Adelaide - Hall, Tony ()
259 North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australa, 5000, Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
5000
Australia
Co-author
CSIRO Agriculture and Food - Szarvas, Steve ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
Sprigg Geobiology Centre, University of Adelaide - Atkins, Rachel (Student researcher)
259 North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australa, 5000, Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
5000
Australia
Co-author
School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide - Caddy-Retalic, Stefan ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Co-author
James Cook University - Holtum, Joseph ()
1 James Cook Drive, Bebegu Yumba campus, 4811, Douglas, Australia
Bebegu Yumba campus
Douglas
4811
Australia
Co-author
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Sparrow, Ben (Director - TERN Ausplots and Eco-informatics)
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Purpose
- This photosynthetic pathway data set was created by TERN to enable research examining the abundance, richness, and distribution of C4 and C3 vegetation in Australia.
- Credit
- We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
- Credit
- <p>We acknowledge the TERN Ecosystem Surveillance field team for their work collecting the voucher specimens used in the δ<sup>13</sup>C analysis. We also acknowledge the support of TERN by the Australian government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Additional financial support for this project was provided by the AMP Foundation and the AMP Tomorrow Fund awarded to S.M., the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100100793) awarded to F.A.M., and Australian Government Research Training Program and University of Adelaide Faculty of Sciences Divisional scholarships awarded to J.W.A.</p>
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Munroe, Samantha ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite Road
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Point of contact
TERN Surveillance Monitoring - Sparrow, Ben (Director - TERN Ausplots and Eco-informatics)
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite Road
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
- Topic category
-
- Biota
- Environment
Extent
- Description
- Australia, Continent-wide
N
S
E
W
))
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 2011-01-01 2022-05-31
- Title
- The photosynthetic pathways of plant species surveyed in Australia’s national terrestrial monitoring network
- Website
-
The photosynthetic pathways of plant species surveyed in Australia’s national terrestrial monitoring network
Related documentation
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
- Keywords (Discipline)
-
- Stable Isotope Analysis
Resource constraints
- Use limitation
- The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- File name
- 88x31.png
- File description
- CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
- File type
- png
- Title
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
- CC-BY
- Edition
- 4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
- Other constraints
- Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Supplemental Information
- A full list of the studies consulted is provided within the data file.
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- metadata_records_photosynthetic_pathways_of_plants_TERN_v2_2024
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- Photosynthetic_Pathways_of_plant_species_TERN_version1_2020
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- Photosynthetic_Pathways_of_Plants_TERN_v2_19092024
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly, QLD, Australia, 4068
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Data quality info
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Other
- Photosynthetic pathway assignments obtained from published sources have already been subject to scientific scrutiny and are well-validated. Plant δ<sup>13</sup>C were measured using well-established analytical techniques. All samples where corrected for instrument drift and normalized according to reference values using certified and calibrated standards.
Report
Result
- Statement
- The assumption that all species within a given genus possess the same photosynthetic pathway is realistic in most circumstances. However, we identified multiple exceptions. C4 and CAM photosynthesis have independently evolved multiple times across dozens of lineages. To minimise this potential source of error, all species within a given family that are known to include C4 species were included in δ<sup>13</sup>C analysis. CAM or C3-CAM photosynthesis is particularly difficult to identify using δ<sup>13</sup>C, therefore any CAM or C3-CAM designations based on δ<sup>13</sup>C values should be considered tentative and warrant further investigation. Carbon stable isotope analysis was performed at different laboratories over multiple years. Stable carbon isotope values had average uncertainties of ≤ 0.54‰ δ<sup>13</sup>C based on repeat analysis of all the standards. The mean of the absolute difference between replicate samples (10% of all samples) was 0.22‰ δ<sup>13</sup>C.
Resource lineage
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Process step
- Description
- Photosynthetic pathway assignment : <p>All TERN plant data were processed in the R statistical environment using the ‘ausplotsR’ package. A list of all vascular plant species at each TERN plot was extracted using the get_ausplots function. To assign each species a photosynthetic pathway, scientific names were first cross-referenced against well-known plant trait databases. We then conducted literature searches of the remaining unassigned species via Google Scholar with combinations of the key words “C3”, “C4”, “CAM”, “photosynthesis” and “photosynthetic pathway”. If species-specific information was not available, but the species belonged to a genus known to be exclusively C3, C4 or CAM it was assigned to that pathway (e.g. <em>Acacia</em> spp., <em>Eucalyptus</em> spp. are presumptive C3). If it was not possible to assign a photosynthetic pathway using published sources or presumptive reasoning, then that species was selected for stable carbon isotope analysis.</p>
Process step
- Description
- Stable Isotope Analysis: The carbon stable isotope values of C3 plants range from -37‰ to -20‰ δ<sup>13</sup>C (mean= ~-27‰), the values of C4 plants range from -12‰ to -16‰ δ<sup>13</sup>C (mean=~-13‰). For species where either a C3 or C4 pathway was possible, plants with δ<sup>13</sup>C values < -19‰ were designated C3, and plants with δ13C values > -19‰ were designated C4. Full CAM plants, or plants in which CAM is strongly expressed, have δ<sup>13</sup>C > -20‰. However, CAM photosynthesis almost always co-exists with the C3 pathway (C3-CAM). The δ<sup>13</sup>C of C3-CAM plants are correlated with the proportion of carbon that is obtained during light and dark periods. As a result, C3-CAM δ<sup>13</sup>C values are highly variable (approximately -13‰ to -27‰). To confirm the presence of CAM, additional measures of other physiological and biochemical variables are usually required. With this limitation in mind, for genera with previously confirmed C3-CAM potential, we tentatively denoted plants with a δ<sup>13</sup>C value > −20‰ as CAM, −21‰ to −24‰ as C3-CAM, and <−24‰ as C3.
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:4326
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/1e16257d-57ae-48dd-bbad-5701e72a9f6d
- Title
- TERN GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Point of contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Dataset
- Metadata linkage
-
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/1e16257d-57ae-48dd-bbad-5701e72a9f6d
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2020-10-13T00:00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2024-12-16T00:00:00
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
- Edition
- 1
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
- Title
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
- Date (published)
- 2021
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available