Biomass-density re
Biomass-density relationships and self-thinning of shell and tissue in marine intertidal barnacles
Claver Sibomana and Gen-Xuan Wang
College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Abstract: Although self-thinning exponent in barnacles was assumed to be close to -3/2 widely acknowledged for space-limited plants, steeper slopes have been observed as a result of allometric growth. There is a trade-off between shell and tissue growth in barnacles and self-thinning lines for these individual parts would differ as a result of different biomass allocation. We quantified biomass-density relationships for shell and tissue in self-thinning population of Tetraclita squamosa in two intertidal levels to determine the corresponding scaling exponents to see whether they are close to each other and to the “-3/2 power law”. The self-thinning slope for tissue in low interidal was steeper than the shell one in mid-intertidal and all slopes were higher than -3/2. In higher heights, individuals are subject to more desiccation stress and would allocate more biomass to shell than their counterparts in lower heights which allocate more biomass to tissue, thus self-thinning slope for tissue in low intertidal would be steeper. Our results suggested that self-thinning exponent for barnacle individual parts is not invariant and these different exponents would be explained by different biomass allocation to shell and tissue in response to environmental conditions.
[Sibomana C, Wang GX. Biomass-density relationships and self-thinning of shell and tissue in marine intertidal barnacles. Life Sci J 2013;10(1):199-203] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 29
Key-words: barnacle, biomass-density relationship, biomass allocation, self-thinning, Tetraclita squamosa
