The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Evolution of C 4 plants: a new hypothesis for an interaction of CO 2 and water relations mediated by plant hydraulics
Open accessAbstract
C 4 photosynthesis has evolved more than 60 times as a carbon-concentrating mechanism to augment the ancestral C 3 photosynthetic pathway. The rate and the efficiency of photosynthesis are greater in the C 4 than C 3 type under atmospheric CO 2 depletion, high light and temperature, suggesting these factors as important selective agents. This hypothesis is consistent with comparative analyses of grasses, which indicate repeated evolutionary transitions from shaded forest to open habitats. However, such environmental transitions also impact strongly on plant–water relations. We hypothesize that excessive demand for water transport associated with low CO 2 , high light and temperature would have selected for C 4 photosynthesis not only to increase the efficiency and rate of photosynthesis, but also as a water-conserving mechanism. Our proposal is supported by evidence from the literature and physiological models. The C 4 pathway allows high rates of photosynthesis at low stomatal conductance, even given low atmospheric CO 2 . The resultant decrease in transpiration protects the hydraulic system, allowing stomata to remain open and photosynthesis to be sustained for longer under drying atmospheric and soil conditions. The evolution of C 4 photosynthesis therefore simultaneously improved plant carbon and water relations, conferring strong benefits as atmospheric CO 2 declined and ecological demand for water rose.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A biochemical model of photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in leaves of C3 species
Farquhar, G. D., von Caemmerer, S., & Berry, J. A. (1980) · Planta · doi:10.1007/bf00386231 · Cited by 8,796
Determinants of woody cover in African savannas.
Sankaran, M., Hanan, N. P., Scholes, R. J., Ratnam, J., Augustine, D. J., Cade, B. S., Gignoux, J., Higgins, S. I., Le Roux, X., Ludwig, F., et al. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature04070 · Cited by 1,963
Climatic patterns and the distribution of C4 grasses in North America
Teeri, J. A., & Stowe, L. G. (1976) · Oecologia · doi:10.1007/bf00351210 · Cited by 749
Hohmann-Marriott, M. F., & Blankenship, R. E. (2011) · Annual Review of Plant Biology · doi:10.1146/annurev-arplant-042110-103811 · Cited by 744
Cited by
Sack, L., & Scoffoni, C. (2013) · New Phytologist · doi:10.1111/nph.12253 · Cited by 830
Self-citationPhotorespiration and the Evolution of C4Photosynthesis
Sage, R. F., Sage, T. L., & Kocacinar, F. (2012) · Annual Review of Plant Biology · doi:10.1146/annurev-arplant-042811-105511 · Cited by 759
Linder, H. P., Lehmann, C. E. R., Archibald, S., Osborne, C. P., & Richardson, D. M. (2018) · Biological Reviews · doi:10.1111/brv.12388 · Cited by 293
Self-citationOutside-Xylem Vulnerability, Not Xylem Embolism, Controls Leaf Hydraulic Decline during Dehydration
Scoffoni, C., Albuquerque, C., Brodersen, C. R., Townes, S. V., John, G. P., Bartlett, M. K., Buckley, T. N., McElrone, A. J., & Sack, L. (2017) · Plant Physiology · doi:10.1104/pp.16.01643 · Cited by 265
Self-citationWilliams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Haff, P., Schwägerl, C., Barnosky, A. D., & Ellis, E. C. (2015) · The Anthropocene Review · doi:10.1177/2053019615591020 · Cited by 226
Metadata
- Authors
- Osborne, C. P., & Sack, L.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2012-02-19
- Volume
- 367
- Issue
- 1588
- Pages
- 583-600
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- OpenAlex
- W2146482910
- Cited by
- 213
- References
- 4
- FWCI
- 12.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evolution of C 4 plants: a new hypothesis for an interaction of CO 2 and water relations mediated by plant hydraulics. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rstb.2011.0261
- The paper
- Osborne, C. P., & Sack, L. (2012). Evolution of C 4 plants: a new hypothesis for an interaction of CO 2 and water relations mediated by plant hydraulics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0261
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.