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Why does metabolic rate scale with body size?

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey B. West

    (Los Alamos National Laboratory
    The Santa Fe Institute)

  • Van M. Savage

    (Los Alamos National Laboratory
    The Santa Fe Institute)

  • James Gillooly

    (University of New Mexico)

  • Brian J. Enquist

    (University of Arizona)

  • William H. Woodruff

    (Los Alamos National Laboratory
    The Santa Fe Institute)

  • James H. Brown

    (The Santa Fe Institute
    University of New Mexico)

Abstract

A long-standing problem has been the origin of quarter-power allometric scaling laws that relate many characteristics of organisms to their body mass1,2 — specifically, whole-organism metabolic rate, B = aMb, where M is body mass, a is a taxon-dependent normalization, and b ≈ 3/4 for animals and plants. Darveau et al.3 propose a multiple-cause model for mammalian metabolic rate as the “sum of multiple contributors”, Bi, which they assume to scale as Bi = a i MML:M b i , and obtain b ≈ 0.78 for the basal and 0.86 for the maximally active rate, $${\mathop V\limits^{\bullet}}{}_{{\rm O}_2}^{\max}$$ . We argue, however, that this scaling equation is based on technical, theoretical and conceptual errors, including misrepresentations of our published results4,5.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey B. West & Van M. Savage & James Gillooly & Brian J. Enquist & William H. Woodruff & James H. Brown, 2003. "Why does metabolic rate scale with body size?," Nature, Nature, vol. 421(6924), pages 713-713, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:421:y:2003:i:6924:d:10.1038_421713a
    DOI: 10.1038/421713a
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    Cited by:

    1. He, Ji-Huan & Liu, Jun-Fang, 2009. "Allometric scaling laws in biology and physics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 1836-1838.

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