From tropics to tundra: Global convergence in plant functioning Export

@article{citeulike:2895415, abstract = {Despite striking differences in climate, soils, and evolutionary history among diverse biomes ranging from tropical and temperate forests to alpine tundra and desert, we found similar interspecific relationships among leaf structure and function and plant growth in all biomes. Our results thus demonstrate convergent evolution and global generality in plant functioning, despite the enormous diversity of plant species and biomes. For 280 plant species from two global data sets, we found that potential carbon gain (photosynthesis) and carbon loss (respiration) increase in similar proportion with decreasing leaf life-span, increasing leaf nitrogen concentration, and increasing leaf surface area-to-mass ratio. Productivity of individual plants and of leaves in vegetation canopies also changes in constant proportion to leaf life-span and surface area-to-mass ratio. These global plant functional relationships have significant implications for global scale modeling of vegetation-atmosphere CO2 exchange. 10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730}, author = {Reich, Peter B. and Walters, Michael B. and Ellsworth, David S.}, citeulike-article-id = {2895415}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/25/13730}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9391094}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=9391094}, day = {9}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, keywords = {nitrogen, photosynthesis, resource\_use}, month = {December}, number = {25}, pages = {13730--13734}, posted-at = {2008-06-15 06:47:13}, priority = {2}, title = {From tropics to tundra: Global convergence in plant functioning}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730}, volume = {94}, year = {1997} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2895415 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2895415 N2 - Despite striking differences in climate, soils, and evolutionary history among diverse biomes ranging from tropical and temperate forests to alpine tundra and desert, we found similar interspecific relationships among leaf structure and function and plant growth in all biomes. Our results thus demonstrate convergent evolution and global generality in plant functioning, despite the enormous diversity of plant species and biomes. For 280 plant species from two global data sets, we found that potential carbon gain (photosynthesis) and carbon loss (respiration) increase in similar proportion with decreasing leaf life-span, increasing leaf nitrogen concentration, and increasing leaf surface area-to-mass ratio. Productivity of individual plants and of leaves in vegetation canopies also changes in constant proportion to leaf life-span and surface area-to-mass ratio. These global plant functional relationships have significant implications for global scale modeling of vegetation-atmosphere CO2 exchange. 10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730 IS - 25 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences EP - 13734 TI - From tropics to tundra: Global convergence in plant functioning VL - 94 SP - 13730 KW - nitrogen KW - photosynthesis KW - resource_use AU - Reich, Peter AU - Walters, Michael AU - Ellsworth, David PY - 1997/12/09/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.25.13730 ER -