Fundamental trade-offs generating the worldwide leaf economics spectrum

Recent work has identified a worldwide "economic" spectrum of correlated leaf traits that affects global patterns of nutrient cycling and primary productivity and that is used to calibrate vegetation-climate models. The correlation patterns are displayed by species from the arctic to the t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2006-03, Vol.87 (3), p.535-541
Main Authors: Shipley, Bill, Lechowicz, Martin J., Wright, Ian, Reich, Peter B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Average linear density
Biodiversity
biogeochemical cycles
Biological and medical sciences
Biomass
Cell walls
Climate
Coefficients
comparative ecology
Construction costs
correlation
Ecological modeling
Economics
Ecosystem
equations
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Geography
leaf area
leaf life span
leaf longevity
leaf mass per area, LMA
leaf nitrogen content
Leaves
Longevity
mathematical models
Mathematics
Models, Biological
net photosynthetic rate
Nitrogen
Nitrogen - metabolism
nitrogen content
path analysis
photosynthesis
Photosynthesis - physiology
Plant cells
plant ecology
Plant Leaves - chemistry
Plant Leaves - growth & development
Plant Leaves - metabolism
Plant Leaves - physiology
primary productivity
specific leaf area, SLA
Structural equation models
structural equations modeling, SEM
traits
vanishing tetrads
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Summary:Recent work has identified a worldwide "economic" spectrum of correlated leaf traits that affects global patterns of nutrient cycling and primary productivity and that is used to calibrate vegetation-climate models. The correlation patterns are displayed by species from the arctic to the tropics and are largely independent of growth form or phylogeny. This generality suggests that unidentified fundamental constraints control the return of photosynthates on investments of nutrients and dry mass in leaves. Using novel graph theoretic methods and structural equation modeling, we show that the relationships among these variables can best be explained by assuming (1) a necessary trade-off between allocation to structural tissues versus liquid phase processes and (2) an evolutionary trade-off between leaf photosynthetic rates, construction costs, and leaf longevity.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/05-1051