The scaling of leaf area and mass: the cost of light interception increases with leaf size.

ABSTRACT: For leaves, the light-capturing surface area per unit dry mass investment (specific leaf area, SLA) is a key trait from physiological, ecological and biophysical perspectives. To address whether SLA declines with leaf size, as hypothesized due to increasing costs of support in larger leaves, we compiled data on intraspecific variation in leaf dry mass (LM) and leaf surface area (LA) for 6334 leaves of 157 species. We used the power function LM=alpha LAbeta to test whether, within each species, large leaves deploy less surface area per unit dry mass than small leaves. Comparing scaling exponents (beta) showed that more species had a statistically significant decrease in SLA as leaf size increased (61) than the opposite (7) and the average beta was significantly greater than 1 (betamean=1.10

SUBMITTER: Milla R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2706187 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature