AOBPreview originally published online on August 5, 2008
Annals of Botany 2008 102(4):623-629; doi:10.1093/aob/mcn135
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Generality of Leaf Size versus Number Trade-off in Temperate Woody Species
1 Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
2 Department of Biology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
* For correspondence. E-mail shcs{at}nju.edu.cn
Received: 6 May 2008 Returned for revision: 29 May 2008 Accepted: 20 June 2008 Published electronically: 5 August 2008
Background and Aims: Trade-offs are fundamental to life-history theory, and the leaf size vs. number trade-off has recently been suggested to be of importance to our understanding leaf size evolution. The purpose of the present study was to test whether the isometric, negative relationship between leaf size and number found by Kleiman and Aarssen is conserved between plant functional types and between habitats.
Methods: Leaf mass, area and number, and stem mass and volume of current-year shoots were measured for 107 temperate broadleaved woody species at two altitudes on Gongga Mountain, south-west China. The scaling relationships of leaf size (leaf area and mass) vs. (mass- and volume-based) leafing intensity were analysed in relation to leaf habit, leaf form and habitat type. Trait relationships were determined with both a standardized major axis method and a phylogenetically independent comparative method.
Key Results: Significant negative, isometric scaling relationships between leaf size and leafing intensity were found to be consistently conserved across species independent of leaf habit, leaf form and habitat type. In particular, about 99 % of the variation in leaf mass across species could be accounted for by proportional variation in mass-based leafing intensity. The negative correlations between leaf size and leafing intensity were also observed across correlated evolutionary divergences. However, evergreen species had a lower y-intercept in the scaling relationships of leaf area vs. leafing intensity than deciduous species. This indicated that leaf area was smaller in the evergreen species at a given leafing intensity than in the deciduous species. The compound-leaved deciduous species were observed usually to have significant upper shifts along the common slopes relative to the simple-leaved species, which suggested that the compound-leaved species were larger in leaf size but smaller in leafing intensity than their simple counterparts. No significant difference was found in the scaling relationships between altitudes.
Conclusions: The negative, isometric scaling relationship between leaf size and number is largely conserved in plants, while the leaf size vs. number trade-off can be mediated by leaf properties. The isometry of the leaf size vs. number relationship may simply result from a biomass allocation trade-off, although a twig size constraint may provide an alternative mechanism.
Key words: Allometry, trade-off, leafing intensity, leaf size, leaf habit, leaf form
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
Related articles in Ann Bot:
- ContentSnapshots
Ann Bot 2008 102: NP.[Extract] [Full Text]
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  D. Yang, K. J. Niklas, S. Xiang, and S. Sun Size-dependent leaf area ratio in plant twigs: implication for leaf size optimization Ann. Bot., October 28, 2009; (2009) mcp262v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 T. Whitman and L. W. Aarssen The leaf size/number trade-off in herbaceous angiosperms J Plant Ecol, October 4, 2009; (2009) rtp018v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|