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We thank Professor Tomoaki Ichie and Associate Professor Atsuhiro Iio for providing seed materials for this research, Yoshiaki Iiduka and Daisuke Arai of the Faculty of Agriculture, Yamagata University, for their assistance in our fieldwork. We also thank Dr Saneyoshi Ueno for expert advice on analysis of phylogeny, Professor James H. Brown for valuable suggestions on the manuscript, Dr Steven D. Aird for technical editing and anonymous referees for constructive comments.

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Scaling of shoot and root respiration of woody and herbaceous plants

Publicated to:Proceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences. 292 (2039): 20241910- - 2025-01-29 292(2039), DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1910

Authors: Kurosawa, Yoko; Mori, Shigeta; Ferrio, Juan P; Nishizono, Tomohiro; Masyagina, Oxana V; Yamaji, Keiko; Koyama, Kohei; Haruma, Toshikatsu; Doyama, Kohei; Hoshino, Tomoki; Murayama, Hideki; Yagi, Mitsuharu; Yokozawa, Masayuki; Tomiyama, Shingo

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Abstract

Woody and herbaceous plants are the main components of global terrestrial ecosystems, and their growth, adaptation and survival depend largely on the metabolism of shoots and roots. Therefore, understanding size-scaling of metabolic rates in woody and herbaceous plants, and in shoots and roots, is a fundamental issue in ecology. However, few empirical studies have examined metabolic scaling exponents across a wide range of plant sizes. Using whole-plant chamber systems, we measured respiration rates of entire root systems and shoots of 96 woody species (n = 1243) and 33 herbaceous species (n = 463) from various terrestrial biomes, with plant masses spanning nine orders of magnitude. Scaling exponents for relationships between respiration rates and fresh mass were greater in shoots than in roots, and both were greater in herbaceous plants than in woody plants. Furthermore, scaling of whole-plant respiration, including various species, converged separately for woody and herbaceous plants. These findings suggest some general physico-chemical constraints on energy use by shoots and roots of individual plants in various terrestrial biomes, including forests and grasslands. These data will advance our understanding of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function.

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