Abstract
Studies of the relationship between body mass and population abundance for terrestrial and aquatic animal species based on pooling data from many taxa and assemblages suggest that abundance scales with mass to the —0.75 power. Because metabolic rate scales with mass as (plus) 0.75, this result has been taken as evidence that all species in assemblages use equal amounts of energy. The evidence for ‘energetic equivalence’ is, however, equivocal, because within many individual assemblages the scaling of abundance on mass differs significantly from —0.75. Here, we present a summary of patterns of size and abundance in a number of different terrestrial, freshwater and marine animal assemblages, with the aim of discovering whether there is any generality in size-abundance patterns within assemblages, and whether any generality might hold across terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
