Integrating metabolic scaling and coexistence theories.

ABSTRACT: Metabolic scaling theory has been pivotal in formalizing the expected energy expenditures across populations as a function of body size. Coexistence theory has provided a mathematization of the environmental conditions compatible with multispecies coexistence. Yet, it has been challenging to explain how observed community-wide patterns, such as the inverse relationship between population abundance density and body size, can be unified under both theories. Here, we provide the foundation for a tractable, scalable, and extendable framework to study the coexistence of resource-mediated competing populations as a function of their body size. For a given thermal domain and response, this integration reveals that the metabolically predicted 1/4 power dependence of carrying capacity of biomass de

SUBMITTER: Saavedra S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12322717 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature