Does Metabolic Theory Apply to Community Ecology? It's a Matter of Scale

Tilman, David; HilleRisLambers, Janneke; Harpole, W. Stanley; Dybzinski, Ray; Fargione, Joseph; Clark, Chris M.; Lehman, Clarence

doi:10.1890/03-0725

Cited by 96 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(14 reference statements)

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“…Studies have suggested that the MTE lacks predictive power at the intraspecific level because of the relatively small range of body sizes found within species (27). Our analyses show that variation in lifespan at this taxonomic level is well explained by the MTE's Arrhenius model for thermal scaling both in laboratory studies and in wild populations but independent of mass.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…In fact, Gillooly and colleagues (18,26) have already used the MTE to predict variation in lifespan across species. However, the MTE has been criticized by many authors because it appears to lack predictive power at lower taxonomic levels (27), possibly because of the relatively small range of sizes within species. Nonetheless, many species exist over a wide range of temperatures, suggesting the MTE may yet be useful for predicting intraspecific patterns even in the absence of body size variation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology

Munch

Salinas

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

162

163

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Many ectotherms exhibit striking latitudinal gradients in lifespan. However, it is unclear whether lifespan gradients in distantly related taxa share a common mechanistic explanation. We compiled data on geographic variation in lifespan in ectotherms from around the globe to determine how much of this intraspecific variation in lifespan may be explained by temperature using the simple predictions of the metabolic theory of ecology. We found that the metabolic theory accurately predicts how lifespan varies with temperature within species in a wide range of ectotherms in both controlled laboratory experiments and free-living populations. After removing the effect of temperature, only a small fraction of species showed significant trends with latitude. There was, however, considerable residual intraspecific variation indicating that other, more local factors are likely to be important in determining lifespan within species. These findings suggest that, given predicted increases in global temperature, lifespan of ectotherms may be substantially shortened in the future.any phenotypic traits covary with latitude, particularly among ectotherms. For instance, relative to individuals from low latitudes, high-latitude individuals tend to have higher growth rates and larger body size (1, 2), produce larger eggs (3), have relatively shorter extremities (4), and more vertebrae (5). Lifespan also varies with latitude in a wide variety of ectotherms. For example, lifespan increases with latitude in the yellow clam (Mesodesma mactroides) (6), oegopsin squid (suborder Oegospina) (7), and many fish species (8-11). One example is particularly striking: pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) found in Spain (43°N) have maximum lifespans of 29 years, whereas those in Russia (66°N) live nearly 200 years (12, 13). The purpose of our study is to determine whether this ubiquitous geographical variation in lifespan has a common physiological basis in temperature.Temperature has long been known to influence lifespan (14, 15). For example, Drosophila melanogaster from Brazil raised at 31.2°C lived up to 29 days, whereas flies from the same population reared at 12°C lived up to 247 days (16). Although the temperature-lifespan relationship has been known for nearly a century, most of our knowledge on this relationship is derived from laboratory experiments on short-lived invertebrates (e.g., 17). Studies on natural variation in lifespan with temperature have largely been limited to cross-taxa comparisons (18,19). As a consequence, the role of temperature in controlling geographic variation in lifespan within species is unclear. It is easy to imagine how geographic variation in the abundance of predators, availability of resources, fluctuations in environmental conditions, and local adaptation might obscure any relationship between temperature and lifespan in wild populations.The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) (20) has been used to link metabolism to a wide range of physiological and macroecological processes. Growth trajectories and l...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology

Munch

Salinas

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

162

163

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“…Narrowing the body size range decreases the explanatory power of body size to metabolic rates (Tilman et al, 2004). In our study, about 3 orders of magnitude (about 100 pgC cell −1 to 130 000 pgC cell −1 ) of size range were examined, and body size explained only about 37 % of variation, which is much less than the metaanalysis reported in the MTE (∼ 15 orders of magnitude).…”

Section: Difficulties In Testing the Mte In Natural Phytoplankton Assmentioning

confidence: 54%

Scaling of growth rate and mortality with size and its consequence on size spectra of natural microphytoplankton assemblages in the East China Sea

et al. 2013

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Allometric scaling of body size versus growth rate and mortality has been suggested to be a universal macroecological pattern, as described by the metabolic theory of ecology (MTE). However, whether such scaling generally holds in natural assemblages remains debated. Here, we test the hypothesis that the size-specific growth rate and grazing mortality scale with the body size with an exponent of −1/4 after temperature correction, as MTE predicts. To do so, we couple a dilution experiment with the FlowCAM imaging system to obtain size-specific growth rates and grazing mortality of natural microphytoplankton assemblages in the East China Sea. This novel approach allows us to achieve highly resolved size-specific measurements that would be very difficult to obtain in traditional size-fractionated measurements using filters. Our results do not support the MTE prediction. On average, the size-specific growth rates and grazing mortality scale almost isometrically with body size (with scaling exponent ∼0.1). However, this finding contains high uncertainty, as the size-scaling exponent varies substantially among assemblages. The fact that size-scaling exponent varies among assemblages prompts us to further investigate how the variation of size-specific growth rate and grazing mortality can interact to determine the microphytoplankton size structure, described by normalized biomass size spectrum (NBSS), among assemblages. We test whether the variation of microphytoplankton NBSS slopes is determined by (1) differential grazing mortality of small versus large individuals, (2) differential growth rate of small versus large individuals, or (3) combinations of these scenarios. Our results indicate that the ratio of the grazing mortality of the large size category to that of the small size category best explains the variation of NBSS slopes across environments, suggesting that higher grazing mortality of large microphytoplankton may release the small phytoplankton from grazing, which in turn leads to a steeper NBSS slope. This study contributes to understanding the relative importance of bottom-up versus top-down control in shaping microphytoplankton size structure

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“…[11][12][13][14][15][16][17] The WBE and MTE have been received with both great enthusiasm and intense criticism, both theoretically and empirically. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Nevertheless, it provides the most internally consistent mathematical structure and it offers an over-arching set of predictions that, on average, have received support.…”

Section: The Metabolic Theory Of Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Kleiber's Law: How the Fire of Life ignited debate, fueled theory, and neglected plants as model organisms

Niklas¹,

Kutschera

2015

Plant Signaling & Behavior

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Size is a key feature of any organism since it influences the rate at which resources are consumed and thus affects metabolic rates. In the 1930s, size-dependent relationships were codified as "allometry" and it was shown that most of these could be quantified using the slopes of log-log plots of any 2 variables of interest. During the decades that followed, physiologists explored how animal respiration rates varied as a function of body size across taxa. The expectation was that rates would scale as the 2/3 power of body size as a reflection of the Euclidean relationship between surface area and volume. However, the work of Max Kleiber (1893Kleiber ( -1976 and others revealed that animal respiration rates apparently scale more closely as the 3/4 power of body size. This phenomenology, which is called "Kleiber's Law," has been described for a broad range of organisms, including some algae and plants. It has also been severely criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds. Here, we review the history of the analysis of metabolism, which originated with the works of Antoine L. Lavoisier (1743-1794) and Julius Sachs (1832-1897), and culminated in Kleiber's book The Fire of Life (1961; 2. ed. 1975). We then evaluate some of the criticisms that have been leveled against Kleiber's Law and some examples of the theories that have tried to explain it. We revive the speculation that intracellular exo-and endocytotic processes are resource delivery-systems, analogous to the supercellular systems in multicellular organisms. Finally, we present data that cast doubt on the existence of a single scaling relationship between growth and body size in plants.

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Does Metabolic Theory Apply to Community Ecology? It's a Matter of Scale

Cited by 96 publications

References 4 publications

Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology

Latitudinal variation in lifespan within species is explained by the metabolic theory of ecology

Scaling of growth rate and mortality with size and its consequence on size spectra of natural microphytoplankton assemblages in the East China Sea

Kleiber's Law: How the Fire of Life ignited debate, fueled theory, and neglected plants as model organisms

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