ArticleBiological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society2020
Coevolution of body size and metabolic rate in vertebrates: a life-history perspective.
Article in Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 133 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Life history optimization and the macroevolution of mammal body size.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The "fire of life cycles": age-specific metabolic scaling within and among species.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2026Review
- Co-variation and trade-offs in ontogenetic scaling of growth and metabolic rates in teleost fish.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Metabolic Consequences of Hybridization in European Water Frogs (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Mass scaling of standard metabolic rate within and among individuals in Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis).Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2025Article
- Metabolic-behavioural performance for overwinter survival in a wild rodent.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Basal metabolic rate shapes the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma.BMC cancer · 2025Article
- An ancient regulatory variant of ACSF3 influences the coevolution of increased human height and basal metabolic rate via metabolic homeostasis.Cell genomics · 2025Article
- Integrative QTL Mapping and Transcriptomic Profiling to Identify Growth-Associated QTL and Candidate Genes in Hong Kong Catfish (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Morphological Variation in the Striped Field Mouse Across Three Countries.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Mitochondrial methylation is linked to sexually dimorphic growth in Nile tilapia (Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2025Article
- Article
- The Promise of a Pointillist Perspective for Comparative Immunology.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Review
- Metabolic Rate and Oxidative Stress as a Risk Factors in the Development of Colorectal Cancer.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Climatic temperature and precipitation jointly influence body size in species of western rattlesnakes.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Tetrapod sperm length evolution in relation to body mass is shaped by multiple trade-offs.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Estimating the relationship between fitness and metabolic rate: which rate should we use?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Despite many decades of research, the allometric scaling of metabolic rates (MRs) remains poorly understood. Here, we argue that scaling exponents of these allometries do not themselves mirror one universal law of nature but instead statistically approximate the non-linearity of the relationship between MR and body mass. This 'statistical' view must be replaced with the life-history perspective that 'allows' organisms to evolve myriad different life strategies with distinct physiological features. We posit that the hypoallometric allometry of MRs (mass scaling with an exponent smaller than 1) is an indirect outcome of the selective pressure of ecological mortality on allocation 'decisions' that divide resources among growth, reproduction, and the basic metabolic costs of repair and maintenance reflected in the standard or basal metabolic rate (SMR or BMR), which are customarily subjected to allometric analyses. Those 'decisions' form a wealth of life-history variation that can be defined based on the axis dictated by ecological mortality and the axis governed by the efficiency of energy use. We link this variation as well as hypoallometric scaling to the mechanistic determinants of MR, such as metabolically inert component proportions, internal organ relative size and activity, cell size and cell membrane composition, and muscle contributions to dramatic metabolic shifts between the resting and active states. The multitude of mechanisms determining MR leads us to conclude that the quest for a single-cause explanation of the mass scaling of MRs is futile. We argue that an explanation based on the theory of life-history evolution is the best way forward.
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