Reconciling theories for metabolic scaling

Abstract

Metabolic theory specifies constraints on the metabolic organisation of individual organisms. These constraints have important implications for biological processes ranging from the scale of molecules all the way to the level of populations, communities and ecosystems, with their application to the latter emerging as the field of metabolic ecology. While ecologists continue to use individual metabolism to identify constraints in ecological processes, the topic of metabolic scaling remains controversial. Much of the current interest and controversy in metabolic theory relates to recent ideas about the role of supply networks in constraining energy supply to cells. We show that an alternative ..