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Biological scaling

Does the exception prove the rule?

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Abstract

Arising from: P. B. Reich, M. G. Tjoelker, J.-L. Machado & J. Oleksyn Nature 439, 457–461 (2006)10.1038/nature04282; Reich et al. reply, Hedin reply

Reich et al.1 report that the whole-plant respiration rate, R, in seedlings scales linearly with plant mass, M, so that when θ ≈ 1, in which cR is the scaling normalization and θ is the scaling exponent. They also state that because nitrogen concentration (N) is correlated with cR, variation in N is a better predictor of R than M would be. Reich et al. and Hedin2 incorrectly claim that these “universal” findings question the central tenet of metabolic scaling theory, which they interpret as predicting θ = ¾, irrespective of the size of the plant. Here we show that these conclusions misrepresent metabolic scaling theory and that their results are actually consistent with this theory.

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Figure 1: Metabolic scaling theory (MST) predicts a coordinated shift in allometric exponents.
Figure 2: Plant carbon growth.

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Change history

  • 09 March 2007

    Reference numbers changed from original document. * Trend in legend for figure 2 is G → 0, not G → 1 as originally published.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Brian J. Enquist & Charles A. Price

  2. The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, 87501, New Mexico, USA

    Brian J. Enquist, James H. Brown & Geoffrey B. West

  3. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93101, California, USA

    Andrew P. Allen

  4. Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 87131, New Mexico, USA

    James H. Brown

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611, Florida, USA

    James F. Gillooly

  6. Department of Biology and Department of Mathematics, Kenyon College, Gambier, 43022, Ohio, USA

    Andrew J. Kerkhoff

  7. Department of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853, New York, USA

    Karl J. Niklas

Authors
  1. Brian J. Enquist
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  2. Andrew P. Allen
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  3. James H. Brown
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  4. James F. Gillooly
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  5. Andrew J. Kerkhoff
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  6. Karl J. Niklas
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  7. Charles A. Price
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  8. Geoffrey B. West
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Correspondence to Brian J. Enquist.

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Enquist, B., Allen, A., Brown, J. et al. Does the exception prove the rule?. Nature 445, E9–E10 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05548

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