ArticleScience advances2023
Leaf economics fundamentals explained by optimality principles.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Optimal canopy light-use strategy shapes global greenness dynamics.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Intraspecific variation, trait coordination and resource-use strategies of leaf functional traits in Suzhou tea landraces (Camellia sinensis).BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Differentiable land model reveals global environmental controls on latent ecological functions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Evolutionary trade-offs under stochastic water stress shape xylem vulnerability to drought.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Differences in leaf heat and drought tolerance but not cold tolerance between karst and non-karst forest plants.Plant diversity · 2026Article
- Amazon rainforests are rejuvenating their canopies by producing more photosynthetically efficient young leaves under climate change.Nature plants · 2026Article
- Pantropical moist forests are converging towards a middle leaf longevity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The phenotypic and physiological response mechanisms of Tetracentron sinense, an endangered plant and a relict from the tertiary period, to global warming.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Divergent responses of leaf traits to latitudinal gradients in natural and planted forests.Forestry research · 2026Article
- Nutrient availability increases photosynthetic capacity without altering the cost of resource use for photosynthesis.AoB PLANTS · 2025Article
- Climate links leaf shape variation and functional strategies in quinoa's wild ancestor.AoB PLANTS · 2025Article
- Temporal constraints on leaf-level trait plasticity for next-generation land surface models.Annals of botany · 2025Review
- Global photosynthetic capacity jointly determined by enzyme kinetics and eco-evo-environmental drivers.Fundamental research · 2025Article
- Global variation in vegetation carbon use efficiency inferred from eddy covariance observations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Adaptation in Wood Anatomical Traits to Temperature and Precipitation-A Common Garden Study.Plant, cell & environment · 2025Article
- The economic strategies of superorganisms.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Plant traits shape global spatiotemporal variations in photosynthetic efficiency.Nature plants · 2025Article
- Increasing leaf sizes of the vinePeerJ · 2025Article
- Empirical evidence and theoretical understanding of ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycle interactions.The New phytologist · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The life span of leaves increases with their mass per unit area (LMA). It is unclear why. Here, we show that this empirical generalization (the foundation of the worldwide leaf economics spectrum) is a consequence of natural selection, maximizing average net carbon gain over the leaf life cycle. Analyzing two large leaf trait datasets, we show that evergreen and deciduous species with diverse construction costs (assumed proportional to LMA) are selected by light, temperature, and growing-season length in different, but predictable, ways. We quantitatively explain the observed divergent latitudinal trends in evergreen and deciduous LMA and show how local distributions of LMA arise by selection under different environmental conditions acting on the species pool. These results illustrate how optimality principles can underpin a new theory for plant geography and terrestrial carbon dynamics.
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Registered trials
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