Ontogenetic Growth and Allometric Relations: Seaweeds, the Exceptional Primary Producer

Abstract

The ontogenetic growth model of a typical species of primary producer: bi-dimensional sea-weed (namely Fucus vesiculosus) has been studied. Solving the ontogenetic growth equation, the authors have expressed the mass as a function of time. Numerical data on mass for that typical species has been fitted on the ontogenetic solution to make the time dependence of mass precise. Using the authors’ previous work on length-biomass allometry on the similar species, the temporal behavior of sample area has been proposed. Studying the images of three samples of F. vesiculosus, the authors have predicted their ages from the model itself. Modifying some important earlier works on transport mechanism through linear networks for living organisms, those uses volume filling fractal (self-similar) like network the concept of surface filling fractals has been introduced. That the kind of sea-weeds under examination obeys Von Bertalanffy model which differs from the universal inter-specific trend, defined by micro algae and vascular plants, has been clearly established.