Figure 6: Independence of total vein density from leaf size and the importance of high-resolution measurement of the leaf venation architecture.
From: Developmentally based scaling of leaf venation architecture explains global ecological patterns
(a) Independence of total vein density (=vein length per leaf area) from leaf size across the global database for dicotyledonous species in this study (black points) and in a previous study by Price et al.14 that used automated measurements on low-resolution images of cleared leaves (red points). Values for vein density are higher on average and show greater variation among species when determined using high resolution (note log scale). (b) Mean±s.e. for total vein density from this study (black bar) with that of Price et al. (red bar) and that of Walls49 for 111 diverse dicotyledonous species (blue bar), which focused only on vein density and not on leaf size. The mean value of Price et al. was three-fold lower than those for this study and Walls (P<0.001), and the s.d. of the data of Price et al. was three-fold lower than those of this study and Walls (0.78 relative to 3.06 and 3.26, respectively; P<0.001; F-ratio test). Our data were not significantly different from those of Walls (as indicated by the same lowercase letters), but the low values for vein density of Price et al. suggest that the pattern shown arose from the independence of their low measurement resolution from leaf size.
