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Abundance–body size relationships: the roles of metabolism and population dynamics
Author(s) -
Lewis Hannah M.,
Law Richard,
McKane Alan J.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of animal ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.134
H-Index - 157
eISSN - 1365-2656
pISSN - 0021-8790
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01405.x
Subject(s) - trophic level , abundance (ecology) , allometry , food chain , population , metabolic rate , scaling , ecology , basal metabolic rate , predation , biology , mathematics , biochemistry , demography , geometry , sociology , endocrinology
Summary1 Species’ abundance scales approximately as an inverse power of body mass. This property has been explained on the basis of metabolic rates of organisms of different sizes. 2 This paper considers the additional effect of population dynamics on the abundance–body size relationship, on the grounds that mass flow through food webs also depends on interactions between predators and their prey. To do this, an analysis of simple dynamical food‐chain models was carried out, using rate parameters which scaled with body mass according to empirically based rules. 3 The analysis shows that a function for the abundance–body size relationship derived from metabolic theory is a good first approximation to a function derived for food chains at dynamic equilibrium, although the mechanistic interpretation of terms in the functions is not the same. 4 The results are sensitive to assumptions about the scaling of the self‐limitation of basal species with respect to body size. Depending on the assumption made, the abundance–body size relationship may have a power parameter –1 at all trophic levels, or be described by different functions at different trophic levels.