AOBPreview originally published online on November 15, 2005
Annals of Botany 2006 97(2):155-163; doi:10.1093/aob/mcj021
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
INVITED REVIEW |
Plant Allometry, Leaf Nitrogen and Phosphorus Stoichiometry, and Interspecific Trends in Annual Growth Rates
Department of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
* For correspondence. E-mail kjn2{at}cornell.edu
Received: 14 September 2005 Returned for revision: 14 October 2005 Accepted: 17 October 2005 Published electronically: 15 November 2005
• Background Life forms as diverse as unicellular algae, zooplankton, vascular plants, and mammals appear to obey quarter-power scaling rules. Among the most famous of these rules is Kleiber's (i.e. basal metabolic rates scale as the three-quarters power of body mass), which has a botanical analogue (i.e. annual plant growth rates scale as the three-quarters power of total body mass). Numerous theories have tried to explain why these rules exist, but each has been heavily criticized either on conceptual or empirical grounds.
• N,P-Stoichiometry Recent models predicting growth rates on the basis of how total cell, tissue, or organism nitrogen and phosphorus are allocated, respectively, to protein and rRNA contents may provide the answer, particularly in light of the observation that annual plant growth rates scale linearly with respect to standing leaf mass and that total leaf mass scales isometrically with respect to nitrogen but as the three-quarters power of leaf phosphorus. For example, when these relationships are juxtaposed with other allometric trends, a simple N,P-stoichiometric model successfully predicts the relative growth rates of 131 diverse C3 and C4 species.
• Conclusions The melding of allometric and N,P-stoichiometric theoretical insights provides a robust modelling approach that conceptually links the subcellular ‘machinery’ of protein/ribosomal metabolism to observed growth rates of uni- and multicellular organisms. Because the operation of this ‘machinery’ is basic to the biology of all life forms, its allometry may provide a mechanistic explanation for the apparent ubiquity of quarter-power scaling rules.
Key words: Biomass allocation, Dobberfuhl models, leaf chemistry, leaf protein investment, relative growth rates, quarter-power scaling rules, ribosomal RNA
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  D. J. Greenwood, T. V. Karpinets, K. Zhang, A. Bosh-Serra, A. Boldrini, and L. Karawulova A Unifying Concept for the Dependence of Whole-crop N : P Ratio on Biomass: Theory and Experiment Ann. Bot., December 1, 2008; 102(6): 967 - 977. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
U. Niinemets, A. Portsmuth, D. Tena, M. Tobias, S. Matesanz, and F. Valladares Do we Underestimate the Importance of Leaf Size in Plant Economics? Disproportional Scaling of Support Costs Within the Spectrum of Leaf Physiognomy Ann. Bot., August 1, 2007; 100(2): 283 - 303. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|