{
  "id": 10711425,
  "title": "Universal scaling relationships of marine and terrestrial photoautotrophs with differing developmental trajectories",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/universal-scaling-relationships-of-marine-and-terrestrial",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.754919v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The study examines the partitioning of biomass in 18 species of kelp, which are marine plants analogous to land-based forests. Previous research on land plants has extensively investigated these patterns, but less is known about the variation and evolutionary drivers in marine plants. By comparing kelp and land plant data, the researchers found significant variation in how kelps allocate resources to different organs, such as holdfasts and stipes. Some species showed a more than tenfold difference in investment in these structures when controlling for overall size. This range of biomass allocation patterns among kelps includes values not seen in land plants, indicating differences in selective pressures between terrestrial and marine environments. Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that interspecific scaling curves, which describe how different organs scale with overall size, closely match those observed in land plants. This suggests that despite the distinct physical constraints faced by marine and terrestrial species, evolutionary scaling has converged on nearly identical patterns. The study also reveals that support organs, like stipes and holdfasts, show covariation, meaning that changes in one organ often correspond to changes in another. This physical relationship is crucial for the functional diversification of marine plants and underscores the importance of trait covariance in shaping botanical structure and function. Overall, the findings shed light on the variation and evolutionary patterns of biomass partitioning in marine primary producers, demonstrating that universal evolutionary scaling relationships can arise from fundamentally different developmental and biomechanical pathways.",
  "summary": "Backgrounds and Aims: Partitioning of biomass to various organs is fundamental to growth and survival strategies of plant species, with broad-scale ecological implications from competition to carbon flux of ecosystems. Although partitioning patterns have been studied extensively in embryophytes, little is known about the variation and evolutionary drivers of biomass partitioning strategies in…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}