School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, 37073, Germany.
New Phytol. 2022 Aug;235(3):842-847. doi: 10.1111/nph.18193. Epub 2022 May 24.
Startup plants include seedlings and basal and epicormic resprouts. It has long been held that startups have different strategies from adult plants, but theory for what trait differences to expect is limited and not yet quantitatively tested. Three applicable concepts are analogous to human startup firms, R-shift, and trait-growth theory. All three suggest startups should be built with lower construction costs than established plants. This appears to be almost always true in terms of leaf mass per area (LMA), though many comparisons are complicated by the startups growing in lower light. Trait-growth theory predicts LMA should increase progressively with height or total leaf area, driven by higher conductive-pathway costs associated with each unit leaf area, and by greater reward from slowing leaf turnover. Basal resprouts often have somewhat higher LMA than seedlings, but possibly this is simply because they are larger. A number of eminently testable questions are identified. Prospects are good for a theoretically cogent and field-tested body of knowledge about plant startups.
启动植物包括幼苗和基生和愈伤组织萌发枝。长期以来，人们一直认为启动植物与成年植物有不同的策略，但对于预期的特征差异理论是有限的，尚未进行定量测试。有三个适用的概念类似于人类创业公司、R 偏移和性状-生长理论。所有这三个概念都表明，启动植物的建设成本应低于已建立的植物。从单位叶面积的叶质量（LMA）来看，这似乎几乎总是正确的，尽管许多比较因启动植物在较低的光照下生长而变得复杂。性状-生长理论预测，由于与每个单位叶面积相关的更高的传导途径成本，以及由于减缓叶片周转带来的更大回报，LMA 应该随着高度或总叶面积的增加而逐渐增加。基生萌发枝的 LMA 通常比幼苗稍高，但这可能仅仅是因为它们更大。确定了一些极具测试性的问题。对于关于植物启动的具有理论连贯性和经过实地测试的知识体系来说，前景很好。
