Abstract
A curvilinear relationship between mammalian metabolic rate and body size on a log-log scale has been adopted in lieu of the longstanding concept of a 3/4 allometric relationship (Kolokotrones et al. 2010). The central tenet of Metabolic Ecology (ME) states that metabolism at the individual level scales-up to drive the ecology of populations, communities and ecosystems. If this tenet is correct, the curvature of metabolism should be perceived in other ecological traits. By analyzing the size scaling allometry of eight different mammalian traits including basal and field metabolic rate, offspring biomass production, ingestion rate, costs of locomotion, life span, population growth rate and population density we show that the curvature affects most ecological rates and
Highlights
Metabolic Ecology (ME) views metabolism as the backbone of ecology, driving the relationship between the biology of individual organisms and the ecology of populations, communities and ecosystems (Brown et al, 2012)
In this work we demonstrate the propagation of the curvature of metabolism through different mammalian life-history traits, both at the individual and population level
SCALING-UP THE CURVATURE OF METABOLISM We have evaluated the propagation of the curvature of metabolic rate through seven different life history traits
Summary
Metabolic Ecology (ME) views metabolism as the backbone of ecology, driving the relationship between the biology of individual organisms and the ecology of populations, communities and ecosystems (Brown et al, 2012). The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) (Brown et al, 2004) is a specific framework within ME based on a central equation that attempts to summarize in a single model the effects of body size and temperature on metabolic rate:. Where B is basal metabolic rate, B0 is a normalization constant, M is body mass, β is the allometric exponent, and e−E/kT is the Boltzmann’s factor describing the temperature dependence of metabolic processes (where E is the activation energy of metabolic reactions, k is Boltzmann’s constant, and T is the absolute temperature in K). Following the work of West et al (1999), β is assumed to have a constant value of 0.75, while E is close to 0.65 eV for aerobic processes (Gillooly et al, 2002).
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