ArticleScientific reports2018
On the thermodynamic origin of metabolic scaling.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 19 papers.
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19 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.
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- An enteric ultrastructural surface atlas of the model insectiScience · 2024Article
- Rapid adaptation of cellular metabolic rate to the MicroRNA complements of mammals and its relevance to the evolution of endothermy.iScience · 2024Article
- A Nonlinear Dynamical View of Kleiber's Law on the Metabolism of Plants and Animals.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
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- Variable metabolic scaling breaks the law: from 'Newtonian' to 'Darwinian' approaches.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
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- Lognormals, power laws and double power laws in the distribution of frequencies of harmonic codewords from classical music.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Consistent scaling of whole-shoot respiration between Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) and trees.Journal of plant research · 2021Article
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- Diversity begets diversity in mammal species and human cultures.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Activity alters how temperature influences intraspecific metabolic scaling: testing the metabolic-level boundaries hypothesis.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2020Article
- Does Hypoxia Decrease the Metabolic Rate?Frontiers in endocrinology · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The origin and shape of metabolic scaling has been controversial since Kleiber found that basal metabolic rate of animals seemed to vary as a power law of their body mass with exponent 3/4, instead of 2/3, as a surface-to-volume argument predicts. The universality of exponent 3/4 -claimed in terms of the fractal properties of the nutrient network- has recently been challenged according to empirical evidence that observed a wealth of robust exponents deviating from 3/4. Here we present a conceptually simple thermodynamic framework, where the dependence of metabolic rate with body mass emerges from a trade-off between the energy dissipated as heat and the energy efficiently used by the organism to maintain its metabolism. This balance tunes the shape of an additive model from which different effective scalings can be recovered as particular cases, thereby reconciling previously inconsistent empirical evidence in mammals, birds, insects and even plants under a unified framework. This model is biologically motivated, fits remarkably well the data, and also explains additional features such as the relation between energy lost as heat and mass, the role and influence of different climatic environments or the difference found between endotherms and ectotherms.
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