Ecological pressures and the contrasting scaling of metabolism and body shape in coexisting taxa: cephalopods versus teleost fish



Tan, Hanrong, Hirst, Andrew G, Glazier, Douglas S and Atkinson, David ORCID: 0000-0002-9956-2454
(2019) Ecological pressures and the contrasting scaling of metabolism and body shape in coexisting taxa: cephalopods versus teleost fish. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 374 (1778). 20180543-.

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Abstract

Metabolic rates are fundamental to many biological processes, and commonly scale with body size with an exponent (bR) between 2/3 and 1 for reasons still debated. According to the ‘metabolic-level boundaries hypothesis', bR depends on the metabolic level (LR). We test this prediction and show that across cephalopod species intraspecific bR correlates positively with not only LR but also the scaling of body surface area with body mass. Cephalopod species with high LR maintain near constant mass-specific metabolic rates, growth and probably inner-mantle surface area for exchange of respiratory gases or wastes throughout their lives. By contrast, teleost fish show a negative correlation between bR and LR. We hypothesize that this striking taxonomic difference arises because both resource supply and demand scale differently in fish and cephalopods, as a result of contrasting mortality and energetic pressures, likely related to different locomotion costs and predation pressure. Cephalopods with high LR exhibit relatively steep scaling of growth, locomotion, and resource-exchange surface area, made possible by body-shape shifting. We suggest that differences in lifestyle, growth and body shape with changing water depth may be useful for predicting contrasting metabolic scaling for coexisting animals of similar sizes.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: energetics, respiration, metabolic scaling, body size, body shape
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2019 09:17
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:16
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0543
Open Access URL: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/583...
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3064876