Compensatory Growth: an Adaptation to Environmental Stress in Plants and Animals

Compensatory growth (CG) is defined as a change in growth rate (usually positive) following a period of reduced biomass or slowed growth due to some perturbation (e.g. nutrient deprivation, parasite load, tissue damage, or natural/anthropogenic disturbance). The phenomenon occurs throughout the plant and animal kingdoms, and while it is primarily observed in species with short lifespans, it has also been detected in longer-living organisms such as trees. CG occurs at the individual level as a variable life history trait but has the potential to impact the performance of whole populations and communities.

CG is relatively well known in biology, especially in animals, but remains a fairly new concept in tree biology and forestry where it helps to explain diverse forest growth patterns after partial mortality (thinning). Inducing CG may lead to enhanced forest productivity in the long term, not only yielding more timber but through improving ecosystem services such as carbon storage. CG has also been observed in birds, fishes, all kinds of farm animals, and insects. CG therefore not only helps us to understand organisms’ response to a changing environment, but has important applications in improving production efficiency within industries such as livestock, fisheries, aquaculture, and forestry through silviculture.

While CG is common, we expect it to be driven by different mechanisms and present differently under different conditions. This Research Topic will serve as an interdisciplinary platform providing an integrated insight into CG, helping to identify its key features and commonalities across systems. While experimental approaches have been effectively employed in CG research for short-living species; a modeling approach may be more appropriate for effectively studying species with longer lifespans in a variety of ecosystems. However, such models must first incorporate a better understanding of CG and its mechanisms, and we envision that this Research Topic will help to achieve this.

We therefore encourage manuscripts of all types, including, but not limited to the following topics:

• Functional analysis of CG: the importance of CG, behavioral ecology and evolutionary perspectives, explanations of ecosystem resilience;
• Mechanisms of CG: resource allocation and physiological processes;
• Costs and benefits of CG and its impact on life history;
• CG in plants and other modular organisms: trees, crops, vegetables, grasslands, the optimal grazing hypothesis;
• CG in unitary organisms: fishes, aquaculture, livestock, optimal feeding regimes;
• Contextual CG: the impact of the environment (nature of, and timing and intensity of unfavorable conditions) and individual internal states (e.g., sex, size, etc.) on CG;
• Methodologies in CG research: experimental and theoretical approaches;
• CG impacts on populations: scale issues such as individual vs. population, biomass, and carbon budget;
• CG impacts on communities and ecosystems: systems ecology perspectives, maintenance of community structure, ecosystem resilience, elasticity vs. resilience, keystone species maintenance;
• Applied CG: managing CG to maximize forestry (productivity), agriculture (crop yield), agroforestry, and conservation (e.g. reduction of pesticide applications) performance;
• Occurrence of CG as a response to poor early conditions, in e.g. birds, amphibians, or insects.