Leaf-age and petiole biomass play significant roles in leaf scaling theory

Xuchen Guo; Julian Schrader; Peijian Shi; Yabing Jiao; Qinyue Miao; Jianhui Xue; Karl J Niklas

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1322245

Leaf-age and petiole biomass play significant roles in leaf scaling theory

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Dec 21:14:1322245. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1322245. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xuchen Guo¹, Julian Schrader², Peijian Shi¹, Yabing Jiao¹, Qinyue Miao¹, Jianhui Xue^{1

3}, Karl J Niklas⁴

Affiliations

¹ Co-Innovation Centre for Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, Bamboo Research Institute, College of Biology and Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China.
² School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
³ Institute of Botany, Jiangsu Province and Chinese Academy Sciences, Nanjing, China.
⁴ School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States.

Abstract

Foliage leaves are essential for plant survival and growth, and how plants allocate biomass to their leaves reveals their economic and ecological strategies. Prior studies have shown that leaf-age significantly influences leaf biomass allocation patterns. However, unravelling the effects of ontogeny on partitioning biomass remains a challenge because it is confounded by the effects of environmental factors. Here, we aim to elucidate whether leaf-age affects the allocation to the lamina and petiole by examining leaves of known age growing in the same general environmental context. We sampled 2698 Photinia serratifolia leaves developing in the same environment from April to November 2021, representing eight leaf-ages (n > 300 for each leaf-age). Petiole and lamina biomass, and lamina area were measured to evaluate the scaling relationships using reduced major axis regression protocols. The bootstrap percentile method was used to determine the differences in scaling exponents among the different leaf-ages. ANOVA with Tukey's HSD was used to compare the ratios of petiole and lamina biomass to lamina area across the leaf-ages. Correlation tests were used to determine if exponents, intercepts, and ratios differed significantly across the different leaf-ages. The data indicated that (i) the ratio of petiole and lamina biomass to lamina area and the scaling exponent of lamina biomass versus lamina area correlate positively with leaf-age, and (ii) the scaling exponent of petiole biomass versus lamina area correlates negatively with leaf-age. Leaf maturation process involves an inverse proportional allocation between lamina and petiole biomass for expanding photosynthetic area. This phenomenon underscores the effect of leaf-age on biomass allocation and the importance of adopting an ontogenetic perspective when entertaining plant scaling theories and unravelling the principles governing shifts in biomass allocation throughout the leaf lifespan.

Keywords: diminishing returns; leaf mass per unit area; ontogeny; scaling growth; trade-offs.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. JX was supported by the Evaluation on the biodiversity and carbon sequestration of typical wetland ecosystems in Jiangsu Province (No: LYKJ(2022)02).