  Respiration measurements of whole tree plants have been reported that give
evidence that the relative per volume/mass unit respiration decreases with
increase of tree body size. In this study, based on the available data
published a question was explored if the relative per area unit respiration in
trees can be a constant, independent of the surface area size. There is a
definite gap in the published data when the allometric studies of tree body
structure do not intercept with studies on trees respiration. Thus the question
was studied with the help of indirect comparison between various data. The
comparison showed that the scaling exponents, volume vs. surface area and
respiration vs. stem volume, are slightly larger than they should be for the
hypothesis of the relative respiration constancy to hold. The data studied give
evidence that the relative per area unit respiration slightly increases with
the increase in tree surface area. Possible explanations of the relationship
include a different distribution of metabolically active parts of stem and
higher nitrogen content in larger trees. Also, the published datasets might
include large fast growing trees, which imply that larger trees grow faster and
hence have higher per unit surface area growth respiration. A crucial
experiment is required in which the respiration measurements were performed for
the same data as the measurements of scaling between stem volume and surface
area.
