The title of Alex’s talk is The Metabolic Scaling Relation of a Prostrate, Vascular Herb
Abstract:
In the recent years much progress has been made in determining the origins of the scaling laws of biology. It has been convincingly shown that many of these relations can be determined by examining simple, biophysical constraints in fractal-like organisms. This method has been applied in botany with great success. In the case of vascular plants, the physical constraints that determine the scaling of metabolism are (1) the necessity to move water to great highs and (2) to use only use branches with sufficient length and girth to resist buckling under gravity. Although these constraints can be applied to the majority of vascular plants, there are many plants which derive their support from their environment. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment for the determination of the scaling relation of metabolism to mass in prostrate plants. In addition we present theoretical motivation for these results.