What's “Up”? A Critical Look at the Basic Terms of Canopy Biology1

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Abstract
The lack of recent critiques about terminology has led to the frequent misuse or confusingly varied use of the words that are more or less specific to the field of terrestrial canopy biology. I provide definitions for ca 170 terms and subterms, with translations into four languages. Rather than limit coverage to tree crowns, I define canopy biology as the study of life within any aboveground parts of all plant communities, temperate and tropical. This broadened perspective enables ecologists to consider the entire range of challenges faced by organisms living in aboveground plant life, from just above the rhizosphere to the outer limits of plant growth into the atmosphere. Further, this redefinition may reduce the potential for anthropocentric biases in interpreting life on trees or other plants; encourage the use of alternative ecosystems for hypotheses that may be difficult to address in treetops; and promote more general conceptual thinking about life on vegetation, most notably the importance...