Scaling of shoot and root respiration of woody and herbaceous plants

Woody and herbaceous plants are the main components of global terrestrial ecosystems, and their growth, adaptation, and survival depend largely on metabolism of shoots and roots. Therefore, understanding the size-scaling of metabolic rates in woody and herbaceous plants, and in shoots and roots, is a fundamental issue in ecology. However, few empirical studies have examined metabolic scaling exponents in a wide mass range of plants. Using whole-plant chamber systems, we measured respiration rates of entire root systems and shoots of 96 woody species (n = 1243) and 33 herbaceous species (n = 463) from various terrestrial biomes, with plant masses spanning nine orders of magnitude. Scaling exponents for relationships between respiration rates and fresh mass were greater in shoots than in roots, and both were greater in herbaceous plants than in woody plants. Furthermore, scaling of whole-plant respiration, including various species, converged separately for woody and herbaceous plants. Th..., , , # Data from: Scaling of shoot and root respiration of woody and herbaceous plants

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sxksn03cj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sxksn03cj)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: data.respiration.csv

**Description:** Dataset of respiration rates. The data of woody plants were taken from Mori et al. (2010) and Kurosawa et al. (2023) and additional measurement performed for the present study.

##### Variables

* Life form: woody or herbaceous
* Species: plant species 
* Ovle: ovule type, angiosperm or gymnosperm (for woody species)
* Phenology: deciduous or evergreen (for woody species)
* Cotyledon: monocots or eudicots (for herbaceous species)
* Life cycle: annual, biennial, or perennial (for herbaceous species)
* Part: plant parts (whole plant, shoot, or root)
* Fresh mass: fresh mass (kg)
* Respiration:  respiration rates (μmol CO2 s^−1)
* Reference:  reference for the data

##### References

Mori S *et al.* 2010 M...