Fundamental trade-offs generating the worldwide leaf economics spectrum

Bill Shipley; Martin J. Lechowicz; Ian Wright; Peter B. Reich

doi:10.1890/05-1051

Fundamental trade-offs generating the worldwide leaf economics spectrum

Bill Shipley^*, Martin J. Lechowicz, Ian Wright, Peter B. Reich

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

448 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

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 tradeoff between leaf photosynthetic rates, construction costs, and leaf longevity.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	535-541
Number of pages	7
Journal	Ecology
Volume	87
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1890/05-1051
Publication status	Published - Mar 2006

Bibliographical note

Copyright by the Ecological Society of America. Article published as Shipley, B., Lechowicz, M. J., Wright, I., and Reich, P. B. (2006). Fundamental trade-offs generating the worldwide leaf economics spectrum. Ecology, 87(3), 535-541, doi: http://doi.org/10.1890/05-1051

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Fundamental trade-offs generating the worldwide leaf economics spectrum

Abstract

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