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We model plant species diversity globally by country to show that future plant diversity capacity has a strong dependence on changing climate and carbon dioxide concentration. CO2 increase, through its impact on net primary production and warming is predicted to increase regional diversity capacity, while warming with constant CO2 leads to decreases in diversity capacity. Increased CO2 concentrations are unlikely to counter projected extinctions of endemic species, shown in earlier studies to be more strongly dependent on changing land use patterns than climate per se. Model predictions were tested against (1) contemporary observations of tree species diversity in different biomes, (2) an independent global map of contemporary species diversity and (3) time sequences of plant naturalisation for different locations. Good agreements between model, observations and naturalisation patterns support the suggestion that future diversity capacity increases are likely to be filled from a ‘cosmopolitan weed pool’ for which migration appears to be an insignificant barrier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of 100 species and 122 observations has shown an average reduction in stomatal density of 143% (SE ± 2.2%) with CO2 enrichment, with 74% of the cases exhibiting a reduction in stomatal density. A sign test demonstrated that stomata! density decreases, in response to CO2, significantly more often than expected by chance. Repeated observations on the same species indicated a significant repeatability in the direction of the stomatal response. Analyses which removed the potential effect of taxonomy on this data set showed no significant patterns in the dependency of the degree of stomatal change on growth form (woodiness vs. non-woodiness; trees vs. shrubs), habitat (cool VS. warm) or stomatal distribution on the leaf (amphi- vs. hypostomatous). Forty-three of the observations had been made in controlled environments and under a typical range in CO2 enrichment of 350-700 μmol mol-1. For these cases the average stomata! density declined by 9% (SE ± 3.3%) and 60% of the cases showed reductions in stomatal density. When analyses were restricted to these 43 observations, amphistomatous samples more frequently had greater changes in stomatal density than did hypostomatous samples. The degree of reduction in stomatal density with increasing CO2 increases with initial stomatal density, after the influence of taxonomy is removed using analyses of independent contrasts. When the data were examined for patterns that might be due explicitly to the effects of relatedness, the subclasses of the Hamamelidae and the Rosidae showed highly significant reductions in stomatal density with CO2 (87% of the specks studied in the Hamamelidae and 80% of the species in the Rosidae showed reduction with CO2 enrichment) and correlations between initial stomatal density and degree of reduction in stomatal density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]