‘In the statistics of today, transformations . . . [aid] in the analysis of data by bending the data nearer the Procrustean bed of the assumptions underlying conventional analyses’ (Tukey, 1957). This letter is in response to Cawley & Janacek (2010), who take exception with our critique of a widely used procedure for estimating bodymass of dinosaurs and other giant animals in extinct lineages (...

Metabolism of living organisms is a foundation of life. The metabolic rate (energy production per unit time) increases slower than organisms' mass. When this phenomenon is considered across different species, it is called interspecific allometric scaling, whose causes are unknown. We argue that the cause of interspecific allometric scaling is the total effect of physiological and adaptation mec...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Previous work has shown that the entire photosynthetic light response curve, based on both Mitscherlich and Michaelis-Menten functions, could be predicted in an interspecific context through allometric relations linking the parameters of these functions to two static leaf traits: leaf nitrogen (N) content and leaf mass per area (LMA). This paper describes to what extent thes...

A long-standing question in developmental biology is how do growing and developing animals achieve form and then maintain it. We have revealed a critical transition in growth control during zebrafish caudal fin development, wherein a switch from allometric to isometric growth occurs. This morphological transition led us to hypothesize additional physiological changes in growth control pathways....

The traditional method for normalizing quantitative strength data is to divide force or torque by body mass. We have previously shown that this method is not appropriate for able-bodied children and young adults and that normalization using allometric scaling is more effective. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of applying existing normalization equations for lo...

We compiled a global database for leaf, stem and root biomass representing c. 11 000 records for c. 1200 herbaceous and woody species grown under either controlled or field conditions. We used this data set to analyse allometric relationships and fractional biomass distribution to leaves, stems and roots. We tested whether allometric scaling exponents are generally constant across plant sizes a...

We present novel length to ash-free dry mass and preclitellar diameter to ash-free dry mass allometric equations for seven earthworm species from the families Megascolecidae and Lumbricidae, all of which are exotic and most of which are of ecological concern in North America: Eisenia hortensis, Eisenia fetida, Dendrodrilus rubidus, Lumbricus rubellus, Octolasion sp., Amynthas hilgendorfi, and P...

Few food web theory hypotheses/predictions can be readily tested using likelihoods of reproducing the data. Simple probabilistic models for food web structure, however, are an exception as their likelihoods were recently derived. Here I test the performance of a more complex model for food web structure that is grounded in the allometric scaling of interactions with body size and the theory of ...