One of the central problems facing biology is to identify the general principles that govern the evolution of form, function and diversity. Adding to this problem is the complexity of connecting pattern and process across several scales of biological organization. The career development plan will allow for the development of a rigorous integrative training program in biological scaling at the University of Arizona. The proposed research program consists of two parts: 1) Expand a general allometric framework to account for patterns of ontogenetic growth across vascular plants. This focus will provide theoretical extensions and empirical assessments of allometric theory to account for patterns of ontogenetic growth and allocation across vascular plants; 2) Extend theoretical framework to quantitatively predict how physiological aspects of plants and variation in allocation and growth rate ramify to influence numerous attributes of large-scale dynamics in ecological communities and ecosystems. This line of investigation is geared toward: (i) documenting prominent scaling laws associated with the production and allocation of biomass across ecological communities; (ii) elucidating how the constraints of plant allometry influences the size structuring and dynamics of ecological communities; and (iii) highlighting a novel theory for the movement of resources and energy through ecosystems. The multifaceted research proposed will combine elaboration of allometric theory, the compilation of large global datasets, and experimental greenhouse manipulations to assess the quantitative predictions of new theoretical insights. The proposed research will contribute to a significant advancement in our ability to mechanistically predict the scaling of pattern and process in biology.
