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Population ecology

Common rules for animals and plants

Nature volume 395, pages 115–116 (1998)Cite this article

The causes of the apparent regularities in the relationship between plant size and number in natural stands of vegetation1 constitute something of a puzzle. It is no surprise that, as plants in a population grow larger, a given area can support fewer of them. Likewise, a flora dominated by large plants has a lower density of such plants than does vegetation dominated by smaller species. But what determines these dynamics? Plant ecologists have long thought that the controlling factors in size-density scaling would be the g eometric properties of individual plants. Geometry-based theory suggests that average plant size should scale as the -3/2 power of population density. This is known as the ‘thinning law’, and there has been a lively controversy about whether empirical observations support it.

On page 163 of this issue2, Enquist et al. take a different approach to the thinning law, based on the rate of energy use of individual plants. They predict a -4/3 exponent for the thinning relationship and show that many data are in good agreement with the prediction. The same exponent applies to comparable relationships in animals.So, remarkably, it appears that among plants both metabolism and abundance scale allometrically in much the same way as they do in animals, although in neither case do we yet understand why.

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  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    John D. Damuth

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Damuth, J. Common rules for animals and plants. Nature 395, 115–116 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/25843

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