Alexander Petroff

Mentors: Geoffrey West, Interim President, Santa Fe Institute and James Brown, University of New Mexico

There has recently been a large amount of research on the study of how plant anatomy scales with mass. This research has tended to focus on divining quantitative relationships between the size on a particular aspect of a plant and the total mass (e.g. the trunk diameter as a function of mass). The conclusions generally are the result of assumptions such as: the plant will attempt to maximize its metabolism, the plant will try to minimize the energy required to move water to its extremities, etc. However, there has been little research done in finding to geometries most appropriate to these same constraints. This summer, I will work with Geoffrey West and James Brown to study the question of plant geometry. The bulk of this project will be done at the Santa Fe Institute under Geoffrey West to study the theoretical aspects of this question. However, there is currently an experimental side to this project. At the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, James Brown is leading a group that is growing populations of several prostrate, desert annuals in order to experimentally determine the geometry most physically apt for this species. I will assist this group in gathering pertinent data on these plants. The ultimate goal of this project will be to find a zeroth-order model for the geometry of this type of plant.