Allometric Scaling of Body Length: Elastic or Geometric Similarity in Mammalian Design

Observation of Mammalian Similarity Through Allometric Scaling Laws

We discuss the problem of observation of natural similarity in skeletal evolution of terrestrial mammals. Analysis is given by means of testing of the power scaling laws established in long bone allometry, which describe development of bones (of length L and diameter D) with body mass in terms of the growth exponents, e.g. λ = d logL/d logD . The bone-size evolution scenario given three decades...

Allometric scaling of mammalian metabolism.

The importance of size as a determinant of metabolic rate (MR) was first suggested by Sarrus and Rameaux over 160 years ago. Max Rubner's finding of a proportionality between MR and body surface area in dogs (in 1883) was consistent with Sarrus and Rameaux's formulation and suggested a proportionality between MR and body mass (Mb) raised to the power of 2/3. However, interspecific analyses comp...

Allometric scaling of mammalian metabolism

“You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.” ‘On being the right size’, by J. B. S. Haldane (1928). Size matters. Its effect is all pervasive, but it influences different variables in different ways: given that the volume ...

Problems of allometric scaling analysis: examples from mammalian reproductive biology.

Biological scaling analyses employing the widely used bivariate allometric model are beset by at least four interacting problems: (1) choice of an appropriate best-fit line with due attention to the influence of outliers; (2) objective recognition of divergent subsets in the data (allometric grades); (3) potential restrictions on statistical independence resulting from phylogenetic inertia; and...

Geometric Similarity in Allometric Growth: A Contribution to the Problem of Scaling in the Evolution of Size