Abstract
The simplified Gielis equation (SGE) can approximately describe the leaf shapes of many different broad-leaved plant species by replacing two parameters of the SGE with leaf width and leaf length with a floating ratio (c–value) to adjust for leaf length. In this study, we tested the validity of the SGE in predicting leaf area using 20 bamboo species, 12 species of Rosaceae, 5 species of Lauraceae, and 5 species of Oleaceae. We find that c–values in leaf length for 20 bamboo species are all smaller than zero, whereas, for most tree species, c–values are larger than zero. Using c–values, there was a strong correlation (>0.99 for most of the species investigated) between actual and predicted leaf area. Also, using the SGE to fit the leaf profile data, the predicted leaf width approaches its actual value, whereas the predicted length is larger than or smaller than its actual value (for bamboo species and most tree species, respectively). Although c–values ranged from −15% to zero for bamboo species and from zero to 17% for tree species, the mean percent error in leaf area for most species did not exceed 5%. These findings indicate that leaves exhibit more variation in length than in width, i.e., leaf area is fairly conservative despite considerable variation in leaf shape. Given that the SGE adequately describes the areas of leaves with complex forms (e.g., several species of Rosaceae), our data indicate that the SGE is a useful tool for describing leaf morphometrics and may open a door for the study of leaf shape evolution.
Highlights
Among the 20 bamboo species, the floating ratios fell within the range of À15% to 0, and among them, the ratios of 11 species were greater than À5% (Fig. 6), i.e., the predicted leaf length using the simplified Gielis equation (SGE) was slightly larger than the actual leaf length for the bamboo species investigated
For the 10 Lauraceae and Oleaceae species, except for Ligustrum sinense Lour, the floating ratios were within the range of 0e15%, with 9 species whose mean percent error of leaf area (MPEA) values were smaller than 5% (Fig. 7)
Once again, except for P. serratifolia, the predicted leaf length using the SGE was smaller than the actual leaf length for each species among the remaining 11 Rosaceae species
Summary
The land plants first appeared in the mid-Palaeozoic about 470 million years ago (Kenrick and Crane, 1997; Brown and Lemmon, 2011; Harholt et al, 2016; Niklas, 2016), with large multivascularized leaves (“megaphylls”) making their first appearance about 430 million years ago (Kenrick and Crane, 1997; Tomescu, 2009; Becker et al, 2012; Harrison and Morris, 2018) Despite their considerable diversity across extant tracheophyte lineages, species within the same taxon typically have the same or very similar leaf shape. Leaf area is an important proxy for estimating the productivity of plant communities (Garkoti, 2008), analyzing interspecific plant competition (Givnish, 1987), and evaluating plant adaption to environmental changes (Greenwood, 1992; Jacobs, 1999; Hovenden and Vander Schoor, 2006; Díaz et al, 2016)
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