On the role of the phyllosphere community in leaf wettability and water shedding

Abstract

The interaction of plants with wetting events is a highly relevant topic where climate change is affecting precipitation and fog patterns (Matos and Rosado, 2016). Wetting interactions consist of responses (i.e. how plants cope with wetting events in terms of gas exchange) and effects (i.e. how plants affect ecohydrological processes such as water interception). Investigating how leaves either stay wet or shed water is crucial for robust forecasts of changes in the water cycle (Rosado and Holder, 2013). However this is still an under-studied topic, with the realistic evaluation of the role of factors such as leaf angle and drop size in water shedding being only a recent development (Lenz et al., 2021; Roth-Nebelsick et al., 2022).