Integrating metabolic scaling and coexistence theories
Name
Ecology - 2025 - Saavedra - Integrating metabolic scaling and coexistence theories.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
357.42 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b11c0068a1cfe7e6d2c8e81258beb848
Author(s)
Saavedra, Serguei
Arroyo, José Ignacio
Deng, Jie
Marquet, Pablo A
Kempes, Christopher P
Date Issued
August 5, 2025
Journal
Ecology
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Saavedra, Serguei, José Ignacio Arroyo, Jie Deng, Pablo A. Marquet, and Christopher P. Kempes. 2025. “ Integrating Metabolic Scaling and Coexistence Theories.” Ecology 106(8): e70173.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Metabolic scaling theory has been pivotal in formalizing the expected energyexpenditures across populations as a function of body size. Coexistence theoryhas provided a mathematization of the environmental conditions compatiblewith multispecies coexistence. Yet, it has been challenging to explain howobserved community-wide patterns, such as the inverse relationship betweenpopulation abundance density and body size, can be unified under boththeories. Here, we provide the foundation for a tractable, scalable, and extend-able framework to study the coexistence of resource-mediated competingpopulations as a function of their body size. For a given thermal domain andresponse, this integration reveals that the metabolically predicted 1/4 powerdependence of carrying capacity of biomass density on body size can be under-stood as the average distribution of carrying capacities across feasible environ-mental conditions, especially for large communities. In line with empiricalobservations, our integration predicts that such average distribution leads tocommunities in which population biomass densities at equilibrium are inde-pendent from body size, and consequently, population abundance densitiesare inversely related to body size. This integration opens new opportunities toincrease our understanding of how metabolic scaling relationships at thepopulation level can shape processes at the community level under changingenvironments.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70173
