Universal scaling of respiratory metabolism, size and nitrogen in plants

Abstract

The scaling of respiratory metabolism to body size in animals is considered to be a fundamental law of nature^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11}, and there is substantial evidence for an approximate -power relation. Studies suggest that plant respiratory metabolism also scales as the -power of mass^12,13,14, and that higher plant and animal scaling follow similar rules owing to the predominance of fractal-like transport networks and associated allometric scaling^{8,9,10,11,12,13,14}. Here, however, using data obtained from about 500 laboratory and field-grown plants from 43 species and four experiments, we show that whole-plant respiration rate scales approximately isometrically (scaling exponent ≈ 1) with total plant mass in individual experiments and has no common relation across all data. Moreover, consistent with theories about biochemically based physiological scaling^15,16,17,18, isometric scaling of whole-plant respiration rate to total nitrogen content is observed within and across all data sets, with a single relation common to all data. This isometric scaling is unaffected by growth conditions including variation in light, nitrogen availability, temperature and atmospheric CO₂ concentration, and is similar within or among species or functional groups. These findings suggest that plants and animals follow different metabolic scaling relations, driven by distinct mechanisms.