Abstract
Individual characteristics often scale allometrically with organismal body size and the form of this scaling can be influenced by ecological and evolutionary factors. Examining the specific form of this scaling can therefore yield important insights into organismal ecology and evolution and the ability of organisms to respond to future environmental changes. We examine the intraspecific allometric scaling of stomach volume with body mass for 17 species of brachyuran crabs. We also examine how this scaling is influenced by dietary strategy, maximum body size, and activity level, all while controlling for phylogenetic relationships between the species. We show that the slope and intercept of the allometric scaling relationships vary across species and are influenced by all three ecological factors examined here, as well as by evolutionary relationships. These results highlight potential divergent strategies in stomach growth taken by different groups of crabs and highlight potential limitations that may be imposed on the ability of this group of organisms to respond to warming trends expected with climate change.
Highlights
The study of scaling in individual characteristics with body size, or allometry, has been a constant theme of ecology, anatomy, morphology, physiology, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology for nearly a century [1]
We found that stomach volume increased with dry body mass for each of the species examined
Habitat had an important impact, as the relationship between stomach volume and dry body mass differed across habitats for both A. pisonii and for O. quadrata (Table 1, Fig 2)
Summary
The study of scaling in individual characteristics with body size, or allometry, has been a constant theme of ecology, anatomy, morphology, physiology, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology for nearly a century [1]. Focusing on relative scaling of metabolism [2] and anatomical and physiological traits [3], the focus has more recently broadened to encompass scaling relationships for a wide range of ecological factors, including the acquisition and use of resources [4], prey selection [5], reproductive performance [6], population abundance [7], and community and ecosystem properties [8]. Given the importance of allometric relationships, the form of this scaling has received a considerable amount of attention and has sparked spirited debate (e.g., [9,10,11,12]). (For recent reviews of developments in metabolic scaling, see [13] and [14].) Disagreements have focused on the appropriate assumption for the scaling exponent (b) in relating metabolic functions with body mass (M) in the equation: Metabolic function 1⁄4 aMb ðEq 1Þ
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