Shipley, BillLechowicz, Martin JWright, IanReich, Peter B2015-10-132015-10-132006Bill Shipley, Martin J. Lechowicz, Ian Wright, and Peter B. Reich 2006. FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFFS GENERATING THE WORLDWIDE LEAF ECONOMICS SPECTRUM. Ecology 87:535–541.https://hdl.handle.net/11299/174920Recent work has identified a worldwide “economic” spectrum of correlated leaf traits that affects global patterns of nutrient cycling and primary productivity and that is used to calibrate vegetation–climate models. The correlation patterns are displayed by species from the arctic to the tropics and are largely independent of growth form or phylogeny. This generality suggests that unidentified fundamental constraints control the return of photosynthates on investments of nutrients and dry mass in leaves. Using novel graph theoretic methods and structural equation modeling, we show that the relationships among these variables can best be explained by assuming (1) a necessary trade-off between allocation to structural tissues versus liquid phase processes and (2) an evolutionary trade-off between leaf photosynthetic rates, construction costs, and leaf longevity.encomparative ecologyleaf life spanleaf longevityleaf mass per areaLMAleaf nitrogen contentnet photosynthetic ratepath analysisspecific leaf areaSLAstructural equations modelingSEMvanishing tetradsArticle10.1890/05-1051