The influence of branch order on optimal leaf vein geometries: Murray's law and area preserving branching.

ABSTRACT: Models that predict the form of hierarchical branching networks typically invoke optimization based on biomechanical similitude, the minimization of impedance to fluid flow, or construction costs. Unfortunately, due to the small size and high number of vein segments found in real biological networks, complete descriptions of networks needed to evaluate such models are rare. To help address this we report results from the analysis of the branching geometry of 349 leaf vein networks comprising over 1.5 million individual vein segments. In addition to measuring the diameters of individual veins before and after vein bifurcations, we also assign vein orders using the Horton-Strahler ordering algorithm adopted from the study of river networks. Our results demonstrate that across all leaves, bot

SUBMITTER: Price CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3877374 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature