Question

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Evolution has produced interesting scaling relationships between energy use and body size. Why was it predicted that the scaling relationship of metabolic rate to body size is 2/3? Why is the scaling relationship closer to 3/4? Prove that you have a critical understanding of the metabolic theory of ecology.

Answer 1

Metabolic rate determines an individual’s rate of resource acquisition, assimilation, growth, survival and reproduction.metabolic rates are limited by the rate at which an individual can transport materials within the body, this scaling with body mass to the 3⁄4 power. The cell-size theory developed by Kozlowski et al. (2003), is based on the idea that metabolic scaling depends on the number and size of cells comprising an organism. If larger body size within an evolutionary lineage results solely from an increase in cell size, metabolism should scale 2/3 with body size, whereas, if larger body size results solely from an increase in numbers of cells, then the metabolism-body size relationship should be isometric (scaling factor of 1.0). The 3⁄4-power scaling that is commonly observed, results from a combination of heterogeneous exponents derived from many different taxa.