Metabolic Theory of Ecology

The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE), developed by Brown and colleagues (2004), provides a unifying framework linking individual metabolic rate to ecological patterns across levels of organization (organisms, populations, ecosystems). MTE predicts how metabolic rate scales with body size (allometry) and temperature, and uses these scaling relationships to explain patterns in life history, population growth, community structure, and ecosystem dynamics. The theory is grounded in physics: metabolic rate is constrained by supply of resources (energy and nutrients) and demand determined by biochemical kinetics.