This special section contains five papers on research presented at the International Symposium on 'Wood Structure in Plant Biology and Ecology', held in Naples, Italy, on 17-20 April 2013. The symposium sessions focused on: (1) ecological and evolutionary wood anatomy, with special attention to...

Cell-anatomical studies are a fast growing branch of dendrochronology, since they promise additional environmental proxy information with high temporal resolution. It is unclear, however, how many radial files of tracheids have to be considered to establish reliable wood anatomical time series for...

The increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires is seriously affecting forest ecosystems, especially in drought-prone areas. Trees' recovery after fire is related to direct tree damage and is influenced by climate conditions, such as warm temperature and water shortage. In this study, we...

The ratio of leaf internal (c_i) to ambient (c_a) partial pressure of CO₂, defined here as χ, is an index of adjustments in both leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions. Measurements and proxies of this ratio can be used to constrain vegetation model...

Context: Wood functional traits such as IADFs result from the adaptation of tree physiological processes to seasonal climate variability. They could be used to reconstruct tree response to intra-annual variations in environmental conditions. Aims: We investigated the relationship between IADF...

Relict tree species in the Andean mountains are important sources of information about climate variability and climate change. This study deals with dendroclimatology and growth patterns in Polylepis reticulata Hieron., growing at high elevation (mean of 4000 m a.s.l.) in three sites of the...

In the Mediterranean area, intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) are triggered by short-term climatic variations during the growing season. It is known that the formation of these anatomical structures is dependent on age and size, which can represent a problem during the extraction of the...

Measurements of tree-ring features (ring width, density, isotopes concentration, etc.) are well-established proxies of environmental variability and, in particular, climate fluctuation at local, regional and continental scales. In recent years, tree-ring anatomical structure (conduit size, density, ...

Treeline shift and tree growth often respond to climatic changes and it is critical to identify and quantify their dynamics. Some regions are particularly sensitive to climate change and the Altai Mountains, located in Central and East Asia, are showing unequivocal signs. The mean annual...

Climate response of tree-species growth may be influenced by intra- and inter-specific interactions. The different physiological strategies of stress response and resource use among species may lead to different levels of competition and/or complementarity, likely changing in space and time...