Sunflecks?

Abstract

The term ‘sunfleck’ has been used frequently in the literature to describe the effects of understory sunlight regimes on understory species, and less often for leaves in individual plant crowns or plant canopies (the term ‘canopy’ will be used here onwards to describe both). Pearcy and Way (2012) and Way and Pearcy (2012) provide recent, comprehensive reviews of over three decades of studies describing the nature and importance of sunflecks to plant ecophysiology. The authors point out the common occurrence of sunflecks in natural environments, as well as the need for more documentation on sunfleck dynamics and utilization, including the modeling of future CO₂ exchange for different plant communities under current scenarios of climate change (Porcar-Castell and Palmroth 2012).