Conservation physiology of plants

Conservation physiology was first identified as an emerging discipline in a landmark paper by Wikelski and Cooke (2006). They defined it as ‘the study of physiological responses of organisms to human alteration of the environment that might cause or contribute to population decline’. Although the case studies and examples presented by Wikelski and Cooke (2006) focused on wild animals, they also indicated that conservation physiology should be applicable to all taxa. With the launch of the journal with the same name, 1 year ago, this taxonomic inclusiveness was made more explicit, and the definition was broadened to ‘an integrative scientific discipline applying physiological concepts, tools and knowledge to characterizing biological diversity and its ecological implications; understanding and predicting how organisms, populations and ecosystems respond to environmental change and stressors; and solving conservation problems across the broad range of taxa (i.e. including microbes, plants and animals)’ (Cooke et al., 2013).