“Diminishing returns” in the scaling of leaf area vs. dry mass across 94 teas in China

ABSTRACT

The scaling relationship between leaf area and dry mass is commonly employed to balance leaf acquisition and investment strategies. However, the understanding of the scaling of the leaf area and the dry mass in artificially domesticated species is limited, especially in tea. We analyzed the relationships between leaf area and dry mass in 94 tea cultivars across China. Then, we compared the scaling exponent with bamboo (50 species) and trees (252 species) growing under natural conditions. Our results revealed that the leaf area of tea scaled approximately as the 0.76-power with leaf dry mass, which is significantly lower than bamboo (0.86) and trees (1.03). Consequently, it was posited that the growth of the tea leaves may prefer to get more leaf dry mass rather than the expansion of the leaf area due to the long-term influence of artificial domestication.

KEYWORDS:

• Allometry
• artificial domestication
• diminishing returns
• tea leaf area
• tea leaf dry mass

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2024.2375738

Author contributions

J Sun conceived and designed the experiments. YX Hu and J Sun performed the collection and data analyzed. YX Hu, J Sun, and JL Li wrote, and SJ Cui and BS Jin revised the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

Data availability

The author promises to use Dryad to upload the data used by the paper after the paper is accepted.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [32071555, 32001294]; Key Project of Natural Science Research of Anhui Provincial Education Department [2023AH050472, KJ2020A0500].

Notes on contributors

Yuxia Hu

Ms. Yuxia Hu is an undergraduate student specializing in geographic sciences, with a primary area of interest in plant ecology.

Jun Sun

Dr. Jun Sun is a plant and soil scientist, whose primary research interests encompass forest ecosystem functions, plant science, and soil science.

Shujuan Cui

Dr. Shujuan Cui is a phytogeographer, focusing her research on the interrelations between plant science and hydrology.

Jinlong Li

Dr. Jinlong Li is an ecologist with a primary research focus on plant science and soil science.

Baoshi Jin

Prof. Dr. Baoshi Jin is an ecologist whose research primarily addresses wetland ecology, remote sensing, GIS applications, and geography education.