Conceptual figure illustrating the effect of plant size and environmental conditions on biomass ratios of different organs (IMAGE)
Caption
Both APT and OPT influence the biomass allocation among organs during growth. (a) APT, which describes the geometry of the given organism, posits that the scaling exponents between organs, for specific species, are relatively stable, regardless of changes in environmental conditions. Note that it does not imply that scaling exponents are constant values throughout tree growth, but rather suggests that they are a consequence of natural selection optimizing the species' fitness across various environments. (b) OPT emphasizes that plants optimize resource utilization by adjusting the allocation of photosynthetic products, and this strategy applies throughout all the stages of plant growth.
Credit
Man Hu, Hang Shi, Rui He, Nana Wang, Yuzhen Han, Haishan Dang, Quanfa Zhang
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