SynthesisJournal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology2021
Meta-analysis reveals that resting metabolic rate is not consistently related to fitness and performance in animals.
Synthesis in Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Physiology can predict animal activity, exploration, and dispersal.Communications biology · 2022Pooled it
- Allometric scaling and social modulation of resting metabolic rate in a eusocial mammal (Heterocephalus glaber).Biology open · 2026Article
- Assessing the metabolic and physiological costs of oviparity in the epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum).Biology open · 2025Article
- Resting metabolic rate is repeatable, but does not affect call characteristics, in the gray treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Correlation of Morphology and Metabolism of Reproductive Traits in the GenusEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Metabolic-behavioural performance for overwinter survival in a wild rodent.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Integrating animal tracking and trait data to facilitate global ecological discoveries.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Effects of sublethal methylmercury and food stress on songbird energetic performance: metabolic rates, molt and feather quality.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Predation can shape the cascade interplay between heterothermy, exploration and maintenance metabolism under high food availability.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Testing personality-pace-of-life associations via artificial selection: insights from selected lines of rainbow trout on the context-dependence of correlations.Biology letters · 2024Review
- Consequences of the cost of living: is variation in metabolic rate evolutionarily significant?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Temperature and nutrition do not interact to shape the evolution of metabolic rate.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Intergenerational plasticity aligns with temperature-dependent selection on offspring metabolic rates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Interactive effects of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on metabolic rate.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Declining metabolic scaling parallels an ontogenetic change from elongate to deep-bodied shapes in juvenile Brown trout.Current zoology · 2023Article
- Univariate and multivariate plasticity in response to incubation temperature in an Australian lizard.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Variable metabolic scaling breaks the law: from 'Newtonian' to 'Darwinian' approaches.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- The Evolution of Offspring Size: a Metabolic Scaling Perspective.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Selection on dispersal drives evolution of metabolic capacities for energy production in female wing-polymorphic sand field crickets, Gryllus firmus.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Explaining variation in the fitness of organisms is a fundamental goal in evolutionary ecology. Maintenance energy metabolism is the minimum energy required to sustain biological processes at rest (resting metabolic rate: RMR) and is proposed to drive or constrain fitness of animals; however, this remains debated. Hypotheses have been proposed as to why fitness might increase with RMR (the 'increased intake' or 'performance' hypothesis), decrease with RMR (the 'compensation' or 'allocation' hypothesis), or vary among species and environmental contexts (the 'context dependent' hypothesis). Here, we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature, finding 114 studies with 355 relationships between RMR and traits that may be related to fitness. We show that individuals with relatively high RMR generally have high fitness overall, which might be supported by an increased energy intake. However, fitness proxies are not interchangeable: the nature of the RMR-fitness relationship varied substantially depending on the specific trait in question, and we found no consistent relationship between RMR and those traits most closely linked with actual fitness (i.e., lifetime reproductive success). We hypothesise that maintaining high RMR is not costly when resources are unlimited, and we propose ideas for future studies to identify mechanisms underlying RMR-fitness relationships.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.