Abstract
Main conclusion
Leaf vein network cost (total vein surface area per leaf volume) for major veins and vascular bundles did not differ between monocot and dicot species in 21 species from the eastern Colorado steppe. Dicots possessed significantly larger minor vein networks than monocots.
Abstract
Across the tree of life, there is evidence that dendritic vascular transport networks are optimized, balancing maximum speed and integrity of resource delivery with minimal resource investment in transport and infrastructure. Monocot venation, however, is not dendritic, and remains parallel down to the smallest vein orders with no space-filling capillary networks. Given this departure from the “optimized” dendritic network, one would assume that monocots are operating at a significant energetic disadvantage. In this study, we investigate whether monocot venation networks bear significantly greater carbon/construction costs per leaf volume than co-occurring dicots in the same ecosystem, and if so, what physiological or ecological advantage the monocot life form possesses to compensate for this deficit. Given that venation networks could also be optimized for leaf mechanical support or provide herbivory defense, we measured the vascular system of both monocot and dicots at three scales to distinguish between leaf investment in mechanical support (macroscopic vein), total transport and capacitance (vascular bundle), or exclusively water transport (xylem) for both parallel and dendritic venation networks. We observed that vein network cost (total vein surface area per leaf volume) for major veins and vascular bundles was not significantly different between monocot species and dicot species. Dicots, however, possess significantly larger minor vein networks than monocots. The 19 species subjected to gas-exchange measurement in the field displayed a broad range of Amax and but demonstrated no significant relationships with any metric of vascular network size in major or minor vein classes. Given that monocots do not seem to display any leaf hydraulic disadvantage relative to dicots, it remains an important research question why parallel venation (truly parallel, down to the smallest vessels) has not arisen more than once in the history of plant evolution.
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Data availability
All raw images and data tables are available upon request to std@colostate.edu.
Abbreviations
- Amax :
-
Maximum photosynthetic rate (mmol photons m−2 s−1)
- Kleaf :
-
Leaf conductance (mmol H2O m−2 s−1 MPa−1)
- gs :
-
Stomatal conductance (mmol H2O m−2 s−1)
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Acknowledgements
The authors warmly thank Brendan Allan and Corina McTeague for helping germinate and grow plants in the greenhouse, as well as Scott Bradfield for expert plant identification in the field. The authors thank Jennifer Phinney at Kansas State University for her careful handling and microscopy of our difficult tissue samples. The authors thank Dana Blumenthal for his excellent field data from 2015 and for sharing it with us. Finally, the authors thank Dan LeCain for his collection of gas-exchange data during the 2015 campaign.
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STD designed the experiment, collected data, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. JAK collected and analyzed data. TWO designed the experiment and edited the manuscript. SMG designed the experiment and edited the manuscript.
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Communicated by Dorothea Bartels.
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Drobnitch, S.T., Kray, J.A., Gleason, S.M. et al. Comparative venation costs of monocotyledon and dicotyledon species in the eastern Colorado steppe. Planta 260, 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-024-04434-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-024-04434-x