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The functional significance of different photosynthetic CO2 fixation pathways is a question which can be answered in many ways, each being appropriate to certain scales of enquiry. In physiological ecology our purpose should be to integrate these different scales of enquiry as comprehensively as possible, and to show how photosynthesis contributes, directly or indirectly, to performance and survival of plants in diverse habitats. Studies of photosynthetic CO2 fixation were afflicted with a post-Calvin cycle chauvinism in the 1950's, which may have been responsible for the slow and tentative revelation of the C4 pathway of photosynthetic carbon assimilation in the USA and USSR (BURR et al. 1957; KARPILOV 1960; KORTSCHAK et al. 1965). Elucidation of this pathway undoubtedly stimulated new interest in the carbon metabolism of photosynthesis in the next decade (HATCH and SLACK 1966, 1970; CC BLACK …