Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 272, Issue 1575, Pages 1963-1969Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3143
Keywords
allometry; body size; colonial organism; criticality; metabolic rate; tunicates
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The allometric scaling of metabolic rate of organisms, the three-quarters power rule, has led to a questioning of the basis for the relation. We attacked this problem experimentally for the first time by employing the modular organism, the ascidian that forms a single layered flat colony, as a model system. The metabolic rate and colony size followed the three-quarters power relation, which held even after the colony size was experimentally manipulated. Our results established that the three-quarters power relation is a real continuous function, not an imaginary statistical regression. The fact that all the hypotheses failed to explain why the two-dimensional organism adhered to the three-quarters power relation led us to propose a new hypothesis, in which the allometric relation derives from the self-organized criticality based on local interaction between modulus-comprising organisms.
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