Invariant scaling relationships for interspecific plant biomass productionrates and body size

The allometric relationships for plant annualized biomass production ("grow th") rates, different measures of body size (dry weight and length), and ph otosynthetic biomass (or pigment concentration) per plant (or cell) are rep orted for multicellular and unicellular plants representing three algal phy la; aquatic ferns; aquatic and terrestrial herbaceous dicots; and arboresce nt monocots, dicots, and conifers. Annualized rates of growth G scale as th e 3/4-power of body mass M over 20 orders of magnitude of M (i.e., G propor tional to M-3/4); plant body length L (i.e., cell length or plant height) s cales, on average, as the 1/4-power of M over 22 orders of magnitude of M ( i.e., L proportional to: M-1/4); and photosynthetic biomass M-p scales as t he 3/4-power of nonphotosynthetic biomass M-n (i.e., M-p proportional to M- n(3/4)). Because these scaling relationships are indifferent to phylogeneti c affiliation and habitat, they have far-reaching ecological and evolutiona ry implications (e.g., net primary productivity is predicted to be largely insensitive to community species composition or geological age).