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Nature 439, 399-400 (26 January 2006) | doi:10.1038/439399a; Published online 25 January 2006

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Physiology: Plants on a different scale

Lars O. Hedin1

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Is there a unified theory that relates size and metabolic rate across all organisms? Maybe not, according to the results of experiments that measured respiration in plants of widely varying mass.

It is not every day that a 'law of nature' is challenged by empirical data, but on page 457 of this issue1 we find just that. Peter Reich and colleagues1 offer convincing evidence that refutes the idea that Kleiber's law — the all-encompassing prediction that metabolic rate should scale as the 3/4 power of size across animals — can be extended to vascular plants (Fig. 1

  1. Lars O. Hedin is in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
    Email: lhedin@princeton.edu

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