Bounds on stomatal size can explain scaling with stomatal density in forest plants

作者：Congcong Liu, Christopher D. Muir, Lawren Sack, Ying Li, Li Xu, Mingxu Li, Jiahui Zhang, Hugo J. de Boer, Xingguo Han, Guirui Yu, Nianpeng He · 发表于：New Phytologist · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/nph.70626 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Forest ecology and management

Summary A prevailing hypothesis posits that achieving higher maximum rates of leaf carbon gain and water loss is constrained by geometry and/or selection to limit the allocation of epidermal area to stomata ( f S ). Under this ‘stomatal‐area minimization hypothesis’, higher g s,max is associated with greater numbers of smaller stomata because this trait combination increases g s,max with minimal increase in f S , leading to relative conservation of f S semi‐independent of g s,max due to coordination in stomatal size, density, and pore depth. An alternative hypothesis is that the evolution of higher g s,max can be enabled by a greater epidermal area allocated to stomata, leading to positive covariation between f S and g s,max ; we call this the ‘stomatal‐area adaptation hypothesis’. Under this hypothesis, the interspecific scaling between g s,max , stomatal density, and stomatal size is a by‐product of selection on a moving optimal g s,max . We integrated biophysical and evolutionary quantitative genetic modeling with phylogenetic comparative analyses of a global data set of stomatal density and size from 2408 vascular forest species. The models present specific assumptions of both hypotheses and deduce predictions that can be evaluated with our empirical analyses of forest plants. There are three main results. First, neither the stomatal‐area minimization nor adaptation hypothesis is sufficient to be supported. Second, estimates of interspecific scaling from common regression...