Optimal Resource Allocation: How Plants Choose Between Growth and Reproduction

Did you know that plants make daily decisions about how to allocate their resources? It turns out that the optimal strategy for a plant, in terms of maximizing its evolutionary fitness, is surprisingly simple.

Essentially, any given factor influencing a plant's fitness, represented as 'F', should have an optimal value of either zero or one. This value depends on whether the derivative of the plant's overall fitness with respect to that factor is negative or positive.

Let's break that down: if increasing 'F' slightly leads to a decrease in the plant's overall fitness, then the optimal value of 'F' is zero. Conversely, if increasing 'F' slightly leads to an increase in fitness, the plant should maximize 'F', making it equal to one.

This principle dictates a binary decision for the plant each day: should it allocate 100% of its resources towards growing more leaves and expanding its vegetative body, or should it invest 100% in producing seeds or storing reserves for future seed production? This daily choice, determined by simple mathematical principles, has profound implications for the plant's life cycle and reproductive success.