Rate My Professor Marilyn Ball

Marilyn Ball's research investigates how physiological adaptations and responses to environmental stresses influence the structure and functioning of plant communities along environmental gradients. Her work explores evolutionary trade-offs in plant morphology between stress tolerance and the coordination of hydraulic and photosynthetic activity in leaves, with implications for carbon gain, leaf structure, and the capacity of evergreen species to respond to climate warming and rising atmospheric CO2. Studies encompass mangroves, temperate evergreen sclerophylls, and Antarctic vegetation, addressing topics such as salinity tolerance along aridity gradients, coping with temperature extremes under drought, and carbon gain in Antarctic mosses under climate change. Key publications include Feller et al. (2010) 'Biocomplexity in mangrove ecosystems' in Annual Review of Marine Science; Lovelock et al. (2009) 'Nutrient enrichment increases mortality of mangroves' in PLoS ONE; Stuart et al. (2007) 'The role of freezing in setting the latitudinal limits of mangrove forests' in New Phytologist; Ball et al. (2006) 'Freeze-induced embolism depends on nadir temperature: the heterogeneous hydration hypothesis' in Plant, Cell & Environment; and Lenné et al. (2010) 'Freeze avoidance: a dehydrating moss gathers no ice' in Plant, Cell & Environment. She has secured funding through multiple ARC Discovery Grants, such as those on salinity tolerance in mangroves (2010-2012) and temperature extremes (2011-2013), as well as Australian Antarctic Science projects on mosses and freezing tolerance (2009-2010).