Control mechanisms that regulate body size and tissue size have been sought at both the cellular and organismal level. Cell-level studies have revealed much about the control of cell growth and cell division, and how these processes are regulated by nutrition. Insulin signaling is the key mediator between nutrition and the growth of internal organs, such as imaginal disks, and is required for t...

The relation between body size and breast cancer remains uncertain, particularly with regard to differences between pre- and postmenopausal women. The authors examined whether height, weight, body mass index, and weight change were associated with breast cancer risk among pre- and postmenopausal women. This population-based case-control study included women aged 20-74 years (n = 6,548) who were...

Holling suggested that discontinuities in the body size distributions among species of animals are a universal feature of terrestrial biomes. We compared the magnitudes of body size gaps of mammal communities of North America and Australia to those generated by a simple random null model. In most biomes, no gaps were significantly larger than random, so discontinuities in body size distribution...

Great apes and humans are the largest-brained primates. Aside from a few extinct subfossil lemurs, they are also the largest in body mass. Body size is a key aspect of a species’ biology, a large organism having different energetic, ecological, and physical constraints than a small one. Brain size, in so far as it determines abilities to acquire, process, and act on information, is also a key a...

The distribution of species body size is critically important for determining resource use within a group or clade. It is widely known that non-avian dinosaurs were the largest creatures to roam the Earth. There is, however, little understanding of how maximum species body size was distributed among the dinosaurs. Do they share a similar distribution to modern day vertebrate groups in spite of ...

Vision of the body modulates somatosensation, even when entirely non-informative about stimulation. For example, seeing the body increases tactile spatial acuity, but reduces acute pain. While previous results demonstrate that vision of the body modulates somatosensory sensitivity, it is unknown whether vision also affects metric properties of touch, and if so how. This study investigated how n...