Dynamic Energy Budget Theory and Body Size
The explanation of certain body size relationships differs for intra- and inter-species comparisons in the context of the Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory. Young (small) organisms behave different from old (large) ones of the same species because they typically do different things (grow fast and don't reproduce). Adults of small-bodied species, however, are expected to behave similarly to adults of large-bodied species. The reason the parameters of the DEB theory vary between species may thus follow naturally from the structure of the theory.
Maximum body length equals the maximum surface area-specific assimilation rate times the fraction of mobilised reserve that is allocated to the soma divided by the volume-specific somatic maintenance costs. Only the first of these three parameters depend on the size of the individual and is, therefore, proportional to maximum length. Appropriate ratios of parameters that depend on size are independent of size; this reveals how such parameters depend on size. Any eco-physiological quantity that can be written as function of DEB parameters can, for this reason, also be written as function of the maximum body size.
Read more about this topic: Dynamic Energy Budget
Famous quotes containing the words dynamic, energy, budget, theory, body and/or size:
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“A government deriving its energy from the will of the society, and operating, by the reason of its measures, on the understanding and interest of the society ... is the government for which philosophy has been searching and humanity been fighting from the most remote ages ... which it is the glory of America to have invented, and her unrivalled happiness to possess.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“A budget takes the fun out of money.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“... the first reason for psychology’s failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology’s failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.”
—Naomi Weisstein (b. 1939)
“An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.”
—Charlton Laird (b. 1901)
“O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)