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Physiology

Plants on a different scale

Nature volume 439, pages 399–400 (2006)Cite this article

A Correction to this article was published on 22 February 2006

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 has proven more difficult to identify the biophysical mechanisms responsible for the observed 3/4 scaling slope. But Geoffrey West, James Brown and Brian Enquist have proposed a daring theoretical model2,3,4 to explain the 3/4 metabolic exponent specifically, and the apparent ubiquity of quarter-power scaling relationships in biology generally. At its heart, this “metabolic theory of ecology”4 assumes that metabolism is constrained by resource delivery through internal branching networks in organisms. In the case of mammals, this means a circulatory system that supplies oxygen and nutrients to tissues. In the case of vascular plants, it means a system that delivers water and nutrients throughout the plant. If one assumes that natural selection acts to minimize transport costs through such networks, and given a set of rules for fractal branching, the model predicts that 3/4 metabolic scaling ought to apply universally to all organisms that depend on such transport networks.

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Figure 1: Little and large in the plant world.

R. MORSCH/CORBIS

Figure 2: Metabolism and mass.

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  1. the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, 08540, New Jersey, USA

    Lars O. Hedin

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Hedin, L. Plants on a different scale. Nature 439, 399–400 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/439399a

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