Scaling of gut capacity with body weight is part of a hypothesis explaining digestive efficiency across the spectrum of body sizes in ruminant species. Larger animals should retain digesta longer because of gut capacity relative to metabolic demands. Interspecific variation in digestive efficiency is an integral part of the Bell–Jarman principle, which is used to explain interspecific resource ...

The form of the relationship between the basal metabolic rate (BMR) and body mass (M) of mammals has been at issue for almost seven decades, with debate focusing on the value of the scaling exponent (b, where BMR is proportional to M(b)) and the relative merits of b= 0.67 (geometric scaling) and b= 0.75 (quarter-power scaling). However, most analyses are not phylogenetically informed (PI) and t...

Scaling research has seen remarkable progress in the past several decades. Many scaling relationships were discovered within and across individual and population levels, such as species–abundance relationship, Taylor’s law, and density mass allometry. However none of these established patterns incorporate individual variation in the formulation. Individual body size variation is a key evolution...

We discuss a framework for studying the evolution of morphology in insects, based on the concepts of "phenotypic plasticity" and "reaction norms." We illustrate this approach with the evolution of some of the most extreme morphologies in insects: exaggerated, sexually selected male ornaments and weapons, and elaborate social insect soldier castes. Most of these traits scale with body size, and ...

Some scaling properties for a classical particle interacting with a time-dependent square-well potential are studied. The corresponding dynamics is obtained by use of a two-dimensional nonlinear area-preserving map. We describe dynamics within the chaotic sea by use of a scaling function for the variance of the average energy, thereby demonstrating that the critical exponents are connected by a...

Different methods are available to calculate multi-population genomic relationship matrices. Since those matrices differ in base population, it is anticipated that the method used to calculate genomic relationships affects the estimate of genetic variances, covariances, and correlations. The aim of this article is to define the multi-population genomic relationship matrix to estimate current ge...

In this work, we proposed an effective method based on cubic and pantic B-spline scaling functions to solve partial differential equations of fractional order. Our method is based on dual functions of B-spline scaling functions. We derived the operational matrix of fractional integration of cubic and pantic B-spline scaling functions and used them to transform the mentioned equations to a syste...

With fascination we read a recent paper in Biology Letters, in which Braddy et al. (2008) report the find of a 46 cm long claw (chelicera) of the pterygote eurypterid Jaekelopterus rhenaniae from the Early Devonian Willwerath Lagerstätte of Germany, the largest claw ever found from arthropods. The authors conclude that this claw belonged to the largest arthropod fossil ever discovered and estim...