ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Toward a metabolic theory of life history.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Threat-induced neural prioritization: a life history framework for energy allocation under chronic predator stress.Oecologia · 2026Review
- Energy constraint on human health.Trends in endocrinology and metabolism: TEM · 2026Review
- Brain structure and function in Homo naledi.Brain structure & function · 2026Review
- Co-variation and trade-offs in ontogenetic scaling of growth and metabolic rates in teleost fish.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Complex and diverse patterns of neurocranial development in Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Variation in metabolic pattern regulation under hypoxic conditions: a comparative study of rodents distributed at different altitudes.Frontiers in zoology · 2025Article
- Energetics and evolutionary fitness.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Effects of actin remodeling inhibitors on cellular energy metabolism of a model marine bivalve, the Pacific oyster.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Does metabolic rate influence genome-wide amino acid composition in the course of animal evolution?Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Metabolic modeling of host-microbe interactions.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Review
- Assessing the role of mitonuclear interactions on mitochondrial function and organismal fitness in naturalEvolution letters · 2024Article
- Body Mass Shapes Most Life History Traits and a Fast-Slow Continuum in Amphibians.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Bacterial reprogramming of tick metabolism impacts vector fitness and susceptibility to infection.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Heart rate monitoring reveals differential seasonal energetic trade-offs in male noctule bats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Viviparity imparts a macroevolutionary signature of ecological opportunity in the body size of female Liolaemus lizards.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A new mechanistic model for individual growth applied to insects under ad libitum conditions.PloS one · 2024Article
- Phylogenetic signal in gut microbial community rather than in rodent metabolic traits.National science review · 2023Article
- Article
- Life history optimisation drives latitudinal gradients and responses to global change in marine fishes.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Ecological strategies of (pl)ants: Towards a world-wide worker economic spectrum for ants.Functional ecology · 2023Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The life histories of animals reflect the allocation of metabolic energy to traits that determine fitness and the pace of living. Here, we extend metabolic theories to address how demography and mass-energy balance constrain allocation of biomass to survival, growth, and reproduction over a life cycle of one generation. We first present data for diverse kinds of animals showing empirical patterns of variation in life-history traits. These patterns are predicted by theory that highlights the effects of 2 fundamental biophysical constraints: demography on number and mortality of offspring; and mass-energy balance on allocation of energy to growth and reproduction. These constraints impose 2 fundamental trade-offs on allocation of assimilated biomass energy to production: between number and size of offspring, and between parental investment and offspring growth. Evolution has generated enormous diversity of body sizes, morphologies, physiologies, ecologies, and life histories across the millions of animal, plant, and microbe species, yet simple rules specified by general equations highlight the underlying unity of life.
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