Leaf Maximum Photosynthetic Rate and Venation Are Linked by Hydraulics1[W][OA]

By Tim J. Brodribb, T. Feild, Gregory J. Jordan. Plant Physiology, 2007

863 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Leaf veins are almost ubiquitous across the range of terrestrial plant diversity, yet their influence on leaf photosynthetic performance remains uncertain. We show here that specific physical attributes of the vascular plumbing network are key limiters of the hydraulic and photosynthetic proficiency of any leaf. Following the logic that leaf veins evolved to bypass inefficient water transport through living mesophyll tissue, we examined the hydraulic pathway beyond the distal ends of the vein system as a possible limiter of water transport in leaves. We tested a mechanistic hypothesis that the length of this final traverse, as water moves from veins across the mesophyll to where it evaporates from the leaf, governs the hydraulic efficiency and photosynthetic carbon assimilation of any leaf. Sampling 43 species across the breadth of plant diversity from mosses to flowering plants, we found that the post-vein traverse as determined by characters such as vein density, leaf thickness, and cell shape, was strongly correlated with the hydraulic conductivity and maximum photosynthetic rate of foliage. The shape of this correlation provided clear support for the a priori hypothesis that vein positioning limits photosynthesis via its influence on leaf hydraulic efficiency.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/902f8e307ab732966343b1818c1b8bbd4ed45201

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Citations in the corpus

A General Leaf Area Geometric Formula Exists for Plants—Evidence from the Simplified Gielis Equation (2018, background): “Leaf shape can affect the leaf venation patterns [11,12], and leaf vein density (which is usually defined as total leaf vein length over area) has been demonstrated to be a strong predictor of photosynthetic rates [13].”
Trade-offs in interspecific comparisons in plant ecology and how plants overcome proposed constraints (2016, background): “2013) and partly by the length of the path between the end of a vein and the point where water evaporates – a function of VLA, leaf thickness and cell shape (Brodribb et al. 2007).”
Biological constraints on water transport in the soil–plant–atmosphere system (2013, background): “These evolutionary tradeoffs led to strong coordination between traits describing leaf venation and C uptake, with higher vein densities occurring in leaves with larger photosynthetic capacity per unit leaf mass and lower leaf mass-to-area ratio [155,156].”
Angiosperms Helped Put the Rain in the Rainforests: The Impact of Plant Physiological Evolution on Tropical Biodiversity1 (2010, background): “Indeed, a third or more of the total resistance from root to stem to leaf to atmosphere is concentrated in the last few centimeters of that transport pathway represented by the leaf (Sack & Holbrook, 2006; Brodribb et al., 2007).”
The world‐wide ‘fast–slow’ plant economics spectrum: a traits manifesto (2014, background): “…the C-S axis of the Grime triangle and the ‘leaf’ component of the Westoby LHS scheme are paralleled by findings from economics trait spectra studies (Grime 1979; Reich, Walters & Ellsworth 1997; Wright et al. 2004; Westoby 2006), despite different ways of describing and labelling those strategies.”
TRY – a global database of plant traits (2011, methodology): “…can be used to determine parameter values of the Farquhar model (Farquhar et al., 1980), and leaf venation, which has recently been defined in a consistent way and appears to be correlated with other leaf functional traits (Sack & Frole, 2006; Brodribb et al., 2007; Blonder et al., 2011).”
Traits link drought resistance with herbivore defence and plant economics in semi‐arid grasslands: The central roles of phenology and leaf dry matter content (2020, background): “…when these traits are linked at smaller spatial and taxonomic scales with narrower ranges of trait variability (Bartlett, Scoffoni, Ardy, et al., 2012; Blackman et al., 2010; Brodribb et al., 2007; Craine et al., 2013; Marechaux et al., 2015; Ocheltree, Nippert, & Prasad, 2016; Sack et al., 2013).”
Viewing leaf structure and evolution from a hydraulic perspective (2010, background): “Data by Brodribb et al. (2007) suggests that hydraulic resistivity of leaf mesophyll tissue is conservative across species under given conditions and hence that Kleaf can be estimated from the vein density, or the distance water in the transpiration streammust traverse as it travels from the…”
Leaf venation: structure, function, development, evolution, ecology and applications in the past, present and future. (2013, methodology): “The transfusion tracheids that radiate from the midvein in conifer needles, or extend from themidrib parallel to the leaf surface in podocarps and in cycads, provide a higher Kleaf than expected solely from VLA (Brodribb et al., 2007).”
Angiosperm Responses to a Low-CO2 World: CAM and C4 Photosynthesis as Parallel Evolutionary Trajectories (2012, background): “…compromised by the oxygenase activity of RuBisCO, but every unit of carbon gained will come at an increasing transpirational cost, thus necessitating both a greater need for water acquisition and a more efficient internal hydraulic network to maintain hydrated tissue (Brodribb et al. 2007).”
Smaller, faster stomata: scaling of stomatal size, rate of response, and stomatal conductance (2013, background): “The operating stomatal conductance, gop, is also known to scale with other leaf gas exchange and water transport attributes, such as CO2 assimilation rate and leaf hydraulic conductance (Meinzer, 2003; Brodribb et al., 2007).”
Assessing the causes and scales of the leaf economics spectrum using venation networks in Populus tremuloides (2013, background): “A key component of the theory is that hydraulic path length (a function of both VD and leaf thickness, LT) is a more primary variable driving A m than variation in VD (Brodribb, Feild & Jordan 2007).”
Leaf Trait Diversification and Design in Seven Rare Taxa of the Hawaiian Plantago Radiation (2009, background): “The resulting coordination of leaf hydraulic and photosynthetic capacity holds broadly across diverse species (Brodribb et al. 2005, 2007; Franks 2006; Sobrado 2007) and is part of the suite of ‘‘flux-related traits’’ (Sack et al. 2003; Sack and Holbrook 2006).”