An explanation of the relationship between mass, metabolic rate and characteristic length for placental mammals.

ABSTRACT: The Mass, Metabolism and Length Explanation (MMLE) was advanced in 1984 to explain the relationship between metabolic rate and body mass for birds and mammals. This paper reports on a modernized version of MMLE. MMLE deterministically computes the absolute value of Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and body mass for individual animals. MMLE is thus distinct from other examinations of these topics that use species-averaged data to estimate the parameters in a statistically best fit power law relationship such as BMR = a(bodymass) (b) . Beginning with the proposition that BMR is proportional to the number of mitochondria in an animal, two primary equations are derived that compute BMR and body mass as functions of an individual animal's characteristic length and sturdiness factor. The characteristi

SUBMITTER: Frasier CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4562252 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature