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Kleiber's law, like many other biological allometric laws, is a consequence of the physics and/or geometry of circulatory systems in biology. [5] Max Kleiber first discovered the law when analyzing a large number of independent studies on respiration within individual species. [2]
Allometric scaling is any change that deviates from isometry. A classic example discussed by Galileo in his Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences is the skeleton of mammals. The skeletal structure becomes much stronger and more robust relative to the size of the body as the body size increases. [13]
Allometric engineering is the process of experimentally shifting the scaling relationships, for body size or shape, in a population of organisms. More specifically, the process of experimentally breaking the tight covariance evident among component traits of a complex phenotype by altering the variance of one trait relative to another.
Because the proportionality constants β and the scaling exponents α are often denoted using Greek letters, it is desirable to use β as the proportionality coefficient versus α, since α could be misread as the symbol for "proportional". A well-known allometric equation relates metabolic rate to body mass: Y = βM 3/4.
Various authors have proposed at least eight different types of mechanisms that predict an allometric scaling exponent of either 2 ⁄ 3 or 3 ⁄ 4. The majority view is that while the 3 ⁄ 4 exponent is indeed the mean observed exponent within and across taxa, there is intra- and interspecific variability in the exponent that can include ...
This page was last edited on 13 December 2010, at 13:01 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
The square–cube law was first mentioned in Two New Sciences (1638).. The square–cube law (or cube–square law) is a mathematical principle, applied in a variety of scientific fields, which describes the relationship between the volume and the surface area as a shape's size increases or decreases.
The principle relies on the allometric (non-linear) scaling of size and energy requirement. The metabolic rate per unit of body mass of large animals is slow enough to subside on a consistent flow of low-quality food. [1] However, in small animals, the rate is higher and they cannot draw sufficient energy from low-quality food to live on. [1]