The growth rate hypothesis, also known as the resource availability hypothesis, states that defense strategies are determined by the inherent growth rate of the plant, which is in turn determined by the resources available to the plant. A major assumption is that available resources are the limiting factor in determining the maximum growth rate of a plant species. This model predicts that the level of defense investment will increase as the potential of growth decreases. Additionally, plants in resource-poor areas, with inherently slow-growth rates, tend to have long-lived leaves and twigs, and the loss of plant appendages may result in a loss of scarce and valuable nutrients.
One test of this model involved a reciprocal transplants of seedlings of 20 species of trees between clay soils (nutrient rich) and white sand (nutrient poor) to determine whether trade-offs between growth rate and defenses restrict species to one habitat. When planted in white sand and protected from herbivores, seedlings originating from clay outgrew those originating from the nutrient-poor sand, but in the presence of herbivores the seedlings originating from white sand performed better, likely due to their higher levels of constitutive carbon-based defenses. These finding suggest that defensive strategies limit the habitats of some plants.