AOBPreview originally published online on September 13, 2005
Annals of Botany 2005 96(6):1129-1136; doi:10.1093/aob/mci264
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Specific Leaf Area and Dry Matter Content Estimate Thickness in Laminar Leaves
1 Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, UMR 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France, 2 Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada J1K 2R1, 3 Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, CNRS UMR 5553, Université Joseph Fourier, BP 53 X, 38041 Grenoble, Cedex 9, France, 4 ENSA Montpellier, Département "Sciences pour la Protection des Plantes et Ecologie", 2 Place Viala, 34060 Montpellier Cedex 1, France, 5 Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (CONICET—UNC) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Casilla de Correo 495, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina, 6 Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK, 7 Centre Recerca Ecológica Aplicacions Forestals, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona, E-08193 Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain, 8 Kirstenbosch Research Centre, National Botanical Institute, P/Bag X7 Claremont 7735, Cape Town, South Africa, 9 Plant Ecophysiology, University of Utrecht, POB 800-84, NL-3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands, and 10 Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia
* For correspondence. E-mail denis.vile{at}cefe.cnrs.fr
Received: 25 April 2005 Returned for revision: 6 June 2005 Accepted: 29 July 2005 Published electronically: 13 September 2005
• Background and Aims Leaf thickness plays an important role in leaf and plant functioning, and relates to a species' strategy of resource acquisition and use. As such, it has been widely used for screening purposes in crop science and community ecology. However, since its measurement is not straightforward, a number of estimates have been proposed. Here, the validity of the (SLA x LDMC)–1 product is tested to estimate leaf thickness, where SLA is the specific leaf area (leaf area/dry mass) and LDMC is the leaf dry matter content (leaf dry mass/fresh mass). SLA and LDMC are two leaf traits that are both more easily measurable and often reported in the literature.
• Methods The relationship between leaf thickness (LT) and (SLA x LDMC)–1 was tested in two analyses of covariance using 11 datasets (three original and eight published) for a total number of 1039 data points, corresponding to a wide range of growth forms growing in contrasted environments in four continents.
• Key Results and Conclusions The overall slope and intercept of the relationship were not significantly different from one and zero, respectively, and the residual standard error was 0·11. Only two of the eight datasets displayed a significant difference in the intercepts, and the only significant difference among the most represented growth forms was for trees. LT can therefore be estimated by (SLA x LDMC)–1, allowing leaf thickness to be derived from easily and widely measured leaf traits.
Key words: Leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf density, interspecific variation, global comparative analysis
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