Climbing plants are well known for their highly flexible older stems and their reliance on host trees for support. Many land plants such as trees mechanically sustain their entire aerial system for their entire life history ( Givnish, 1995 Niklas, 1999b Moulia et al., 2006 Read and Stokes, 2006). We discuss how such knowledge is not only important for understanding functional biology and ecology of climbing plants but is also of interest for developing new technologies in soft robotics that mimic climbing plants that can navigate through unstructured environments. This is a key feature that distinguishes different habitat preferences. Differences in the mechanical architecture of searcher shoots in climbing plants are informative for understanding how diverse climbing plant species explore and colonise different kinds of three-dimensional spaces. They also developed lighter, more slender, less rigid, but generally relatively stiff (higher E str) shoots compared with tendril climbers and branch-angle-hook climbers. Plants attaching by twining of the main stem showed a wide range of reach capacity. These are linked to different kinds of attachment mechanisms, support foraging, and possibly leaf display. We identified different mechanical architectures for a given reach capacity across all species. Bases of short-reach searchers rely more on primary tissues compared to long-reach shoots, which rely more on wood production. Flexural rigidity ( EI) at the base of searchers increased with reach length overall this increase was proportional although some longest-reaching shoots develop proportionally thinner searcher bases with higher stiffness than shorter-reach shoots. Searchers show a wide range of maximal reach per species from 0.1 to 2.5 m. We investigated reach and mechanical and anatomical organisations (stem rigidity and stiffness, stem and tissue geometry) in 29 climbing plant species from temperate and tropical habitats. We investigate the overall range of variation between short- and long-reach searchers the mechanical and anatomical organisations underlying reach capacities how searcher architectures are linked to different climbing strategies such as stem twining, tendril climbing, root climbing, and branch-angle-hook climbing. We explore the reach capacity and diversity of searcher shoots among representative temperate and tropical climbing plants. A searcher’s reach is a crucial trait for colonising supports in complex three-dimensional spaces. Vines and lianas develop a large diversity of self-supporting shoots among diverse species and different kinds of attachment. UMR AMAP, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, CNRS, INRAE, IRD, Montpellier, FranceĬlimbing plants need to reach supports and position their leaves for light capture.Tom Hattermann * Laureline Petit-Bagnard Christine Heinz Patrick Heuret † Nick P.
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