Generalized size scaling of metabolic rates based on single-cell measurements with freshwater phytoplankton

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Date
2019-08-27Type
- Journal Article
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Cited 9 times in
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Cited 10 times in
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Abstract
Kleiber’s law describes the scaling of metabolic rate with body size across several orders of magnitude in size and across taxa and is widely regarded as a fundamental law in biology. The physiological origins of Kleiber’s law are still debated and generalizations of the law accounting for deviations from the scaling behavior have been proposed. Most theoretical and experimental studies of Kleiber’s law, however, have focused on the relationship between the average body size of a species and its mean metabolic rate, neglecting intraspecific variation of these 2 traits. Here, we propose a theoretical characterization of such variation and report on proof-of-concept experiments with freshwater phytoplankton supporting such framework. We performed joint measurements at the single-cell level of cell volume and nitrogen/carbon uptake rates, as proxies of metabolic rates, of 3 phytoplankton species using nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) and stable isotope labeling. Common scaling features of the distribution of nutrient uptake rates and cell volume are found to hold across 3 orders of magnitude in cell size. Once individual measurements of cell volume and nutrient uptake rate within a species are appropriately rescaled by a function of the average cell volume within each species, we find that intraspecific distributions of cell volume and metabolic rates collapse onto a universal curve. Based on the experimental results, this work provides the building blocks for a generalized form of Kleiber’s law incorporating intraspecific, correlated variations of nutrient-uptake rates and body sizes. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000361962Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of AmericaVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
National Academy of SciencesSubject
Phenotypic heterogeneity; Synechococcus; Scenedesmus; Cryptomonas; Metabolic theory of ecologyOrganisational unit
09467 - Stocker, Roman / Stocker, Roman
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Show all metadata
Citations
Cited 9 times in
Web of Science
Cited 10 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics