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The influence of branch order on optimal leaf vein geometries: Murray's law and area preserving branching
Citation
Price, CA and Knox, S-JC and Brodribb, TJ, The influence of branch order on optimal leaf vein geometries: Murray's law and area preserving branching, PLOS One, 8, (12) Article e85420. ISSN 1932-6203 (2013) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright 2013 Price et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
DOI: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085420
Abstract
Models that predict the form of hierarchical branching networks typically invoke optimization based on biomechanical similitude, the minimization of impedance to fluid flow, or construction costs. Unfortunately, due to the small size and
high number of vein segments found in real biological networks, complete descriptions of networks needed to evaluate such models are rare. To help address this we report results from the analysis of the branching geometry of
349 leaf vein networks comprising over 1.5 million individual vein segments. In addition to measuring the diameters of individual veins before and after vein bifurcations, we also assign vein orders using the Horton-Strahler ordering
algorithm adopted from the study of river networks. Our results demonstrate that across all leaves, both radius tapering and the ratio of daughter to parent branch areas for leaf veins are in strong agreement with the expectation
from Murray’s law. However, as veins become larger, area ratios shift systematically toward values expected under area-preserving branching. Our work supports the idea that leaf vein networks differentiate roles of leaf support and hydraulic supply between hierarchical orders.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | murrays law, hydraulic network |
| Research Division: | Mathematical Sciences |
| Research Group: | Applied mathematics |
| Research Field: | Biological mathematics |
| Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
| Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
| Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences |
| UTAS Author: | Brodribb, TJ (Professor Tim Brodribb) |
| ID Code: | 88851 |
| Year Published: | 2013 |
| Funding Support: | Australian Research Council (FT100100237) |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 30 |
| Deposited By: | Plant Science |
| Deposited On: | 2014-02-18 |
| Last Modified: | 2017-11-01 |
| Downloads: | 303 View Download Statistics |
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