Is West, Brown and Enquist's model of allometric scaling mathematically correct and biologically relevant?

By J. Kozłowski, M. Konarzewski. 2004

331 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea3cad24d3785667df1b8f3086f6c4910b8687f2

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Temperature, predator–prey interaction strength and population stability (2009, background): “Despite an intensive debate on the exact exponents, the power-law (body mass) and the exponential (temperature) scaling of metabolism find broad empirical support (Brown et al., 2004; Clarke, 2004; Kozlowski & Konarzewski, 2004; Savage et al., 2004a, b; Makarieva et al., 2005).”
Plant mass–density relationship along a moisture gradient in north‐west China (2006, background): “Kozlowski & Konarzewski (2004) have argued that the 3/4 scaling of metabolic rate derived from the model is mathematically incorrect and based on assumptions that are biologically unjustified.”
A multi‐parameter artificial neural network model to estimate macrobenthic invertebrate productivity and production (2012, background): “…valid scaling factors (e.g., Brown et al. 2004) between body mass or temperature and metabolic activity as well as its derivates such as production (Kozlowski and Konarzewski 2004; Glazier 2006; Seibel 2007; Brey 2010), i.e., MLM may not describe the existing relationships appropri- robenthic…”
Reconsidering the mechanistic basis of the metabolic theory of ecology (2007, background): “…capillary diameters are size invariant (Dawson 2001, 2005), 4) that the simplified description of the circulatory system is adequate (Kozlowski and Konarzewski 2004), even for organisms with open circulatory systems or no cardiovascular systems, 5) that arterial impedance matching is sensitive to…”
Beyond the ‘3/4‐power law’: variation in the intra‐and interspecific scaling of metabolic rate in animals (2005, neutral): “…(nontubular) circulatory systems of many invertebrates (Beuchat, 1997; Alexander, 1999; Kooijman, 2000), the nonfractal vasculature of plant leaves (KozŁowski & Konarzewski, 2004) and perhaps that of fish gills and book lungs of spiders and land crabs as well (Santillán, 2003), and the absence of…”
The scaling of genome size and cell size limits maximum rates of photosynthesis with implications for ecological strategies (2019, background): “While appealing and seemingly endowed with incredible explanatory power, a number of criticisms of the theory and its assumptions have been consistently raised (Kozłowski and Konarzewski 2004; Kozłowski and Konarzewski 2005; Price et al. 2012).”
New promises and future challenges of fractal calculus: From two-scale thermodynamics to fractal variational principle (2020, methodology): “In biology, there are debating laws for the metabolic law [1, 2], if a cell is considered as a continuum, we have Rubner’s 2/3 law; if we consider the cell surface is not smooth, we obtain the Kleiber’s 3/4 law.”
Sexual and natural selection on body mass and metabolic rates in free‐living bank voles (2010, background): “Moreover, in recent decades the ‘metabolic theory of ecology’, an ambitious, though controversial, attempt at describing a unifying functional principle of ecology, has become a topical issue (Brown et al. 2004; see also Kozowski & Konarzewski 2004; Apol, Etienne & Olff 2008).”
Yes, West, Brown and Enquist"s model of allometric scaling is both mathematically correct and biologically relevant (2005, background): “Kozlowski & Konarzewski (2004) made serious errors in their criticism of West, Brown & Enquist (1997).”
Towards a functional and simplified allometry for estimating forest biomass (2006, background): “…consequences of the WBE approach have been hotly debated (Chambers et al., 2001; Van Noordwijk and Mulia, 2002; Makarieva et al., 2003; Bokma, 2004; Kozlowski and Konarzewski, 2004; Niklas, 2006a), but a recent study based on a world-wide list of 279 biomass allometric equations showed that the…”