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 (19091943)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behaviorbees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paperits possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mothers impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)
“A budget takes the fun out of money.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Every theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy that orders experience into the framework it provides.”
—Ruth Hubbard (b. 1924)
“Gin a body meet a body
Flyin through the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? and where?”
—James Clerk Maxwell (18311879)
“Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second- guessing in The New York Review of Books.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)