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.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Brown, J. H., Gillooly, J. F., Allen, A. P., Savage, V. M., & West, G. B. (2004). Toward a metabolic basis of ecology. Ecology, 85(7), 1771-1789. · DOI 10.1890/03-9000
- Gillooly, J. F., Brown, J. H., West, G. B., Savage, V. M., & Charnov, E. L. (2001). Effects of size and temperature on metabolic rate. Science, 293(5538), 2248-2251. · DOI 10.1126/science.1061967
- Savage, V. M., Gillooly, J. F., Brown, J. H., West, G. B., & Charnov, E. L. (2004). Effects of body size and temperature on population growth. American Naturalist, 163(3), 429-441. · DOI 10.1086/381872
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