IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v398y1999i6728d10.1038_19215.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Plant energetics and population density

Author

Listed:
  • Roderick C. Dewar

    (Unit de Bioclimatologie, INRA Centre de Bordeaux, BP 81)

Abstract

Enquist et al. 1 present data from 37 plant species showing that the use of resources by individual plants scales approximately as the 3/4 power of plant mass, as predicted previously from a model of resource use in fractal-like branching structures2. Thus, Q ∝ M3/4, where Q is the resource use, estimated as xylem transport, and M is the plant mass. In addition, their re-analysis of data from 251 populations1 showed that the ‘thinning law’ between maximum plant population density (Nmax) and plant mass also obeys 3/4-power scaling, with Nmax∝ M−3/4. From these two data sets, they inferred that population resource use per unit area is approximately independent of plant mass, with NmaxQ ∝M0, a relation termedenergy equivalence3.

Suggested Citation

  • Roderick C. Dewar, 1999. "Plant energetics and population density," Nature, Nature, vol. 398(6728), pages 572-572, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:398:y:1999:i:6728:d:10.1038_19215
    DOI: 10.1038/19215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/19215
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/19215?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:398:y:1999:i:6728:d:10.1038_19215. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.