Does the exception prove the rule?

Brian J. Enquist (), Andrew P. Allen, James H. Brown, James F. Gillooly, Andrew J. Kerkhoff, Karl J. Niklas, Charles A. Price and Geoffrey B. West
Additional contact information
Brian J. Enquist: University of Arizona
Andrew P. Allen: National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California
James H. Brown: The Santa Fe Institute
James F. Gillooly: University of Florida
Andrew J. Kerkhoff: Kenyon College
Karl J. Niklas: Cornell University
Charles A. Price: University of Arizona
Geoffrey B. West: The Santa Fe Institute

Nature, 2007, vol. 445, issue 7127, E9-E10

Abstract: Abstract Arising from: P. B. Reich, M. G. Tjoelker, J.-L. Machado & J. Oleksyn Nature 439, 457–461 (2006)10.1038/nature04282 ; Reich et al. reply , Hedin reply Reich et al.1 report that the whole-plant respiration rate, R, in seedlings scales linearly with plant mass, M, so that when θ ≈ 1, in which cR is the scaling normalization and θ is the scaling exponent. They also state that because nitrogen concentration (N) is correlated with cR, variation in N is a better predictor of R than M would be. Reich et al. and Hedin2 incorrectly claim that these “universal” findings question the central tenet of metabolic scaling theory, which they interpret as predicting θ = ¾, irrespective of the size of the plant. Here we show that these conclusions misrepresent metabolic scaling theory and that their results are actually consistent with this theory.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1038/nature05548

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