"Allometric Scaling of Plant Life History"

[Montana]

Here's an interesting read to consider for healthy discussion - basically finding a correlation between lifespan and mortality rate based on organism mass in various chlorophyll-containing organisms.

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/40/15777.full

Some take this type of data even further to claim it applies to almost everything that is capable of growing and dying...

http://gizmodo.com/5978304/theres-a-math-formula-that-tells-us-how-long-everything-will-live?utm_source=Gizmodo+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7f3b590369-UA-142218-3&utm_medium=email

Exponential growth models and statistical analysis are great tools, but to apply such relationships across several types of organisms with the same model seems... interesting, to say the least.

-Montana

 

[Mime454]

I'm probably reading this wrong, but doesn't this have a hint at group selectionism in it?

Whereas the controls on plant lifespans are as yet poorly understood, our findings suggest that plant mortality rates have evolved to match population birth rates, thereby helping to maintain plant communities in equilibrium and optimizing plant life histories.

In plants whose offspring is not very far from them, I can understand this. But shouldn't plants that disperse seeds compete for the longest lifespan to have the most opportunities of reproducing?