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Evidence against universal metabolic allometry
Author(s) -
Bokma F.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
functional ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.272
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1365-2435
pISSN - 0269-8463
DOI - 10.1111/j.0269-8463.2004.00817.x
Subject(s) - biology , intraspecific competition , allometry , interspecific competition , organism , zoology , ecology , evolutionary biology , genetics
Summary1 A long‐standing theoretical problem in biology is the relation between organism size M and metabolic rate Q . 2 This long history of research into such a basic pattern is due to the particular shape of the relationship: it is generally observed that the relation is well described as Q ∝ M b where b is most often between 0·5 and 1. 3 Numerous analyses have focused on determining b using interspecific data, in particular to test whether b = 2 / 3 or b = 3 / 4 . 4 Here a large amount of intraspecific data on fish are analysed, which show that b ≠ 2 / 3 , b ≠ 3 / 4 , and especially that there is no single, universal value of b .