NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB, UK.
Biol Lett. 2011 Aug 23;7(4):615-8. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0128. Epub 2011 Mar 30.
The relationship between body mass and abundance is a major focus for research in macroecology. The form of this relationship has been suggested to reflect the partitioning of energy among species. We revisit classical datasets to show that size-density relationships vary systematically among taxonomic groups, with most variation occurring at the order level. We use this knowledge to make a novel test of the 'energy equivalence rule', at the taxonomic scale appropriate for the data. We find no obvious relationship between order-specific exponents for abundance and metabolic rate, although most orders show substantially shallower (less negative) scaling than predicted by energy equivalence. This finding implies greater energy flux among larger-bodied animals, with the largest species using two orders of magnitude more energy than the smallest. Our results reject the traditional interpretation of energy equivalence as a predictive rule. However, some variation in size-density exponents is consistent with a model of geometric constraints on foraging.
体质量与丰度的关系是宏观生态学研究的重点。该关系的形式被认为反映了物种之间能量的分配。我们重新研究了经典数据集，结果表明，大小-密度关系在分类群中呈现系统变化，大部分变化发生在目级。我们利用这一知识，在适合数据的分类学尺度上，对“能量等效法则”进行了新的检验。我们发现，丰度和代谢率的特定目级指数之间没有明显的关系，尽管大多数目级的标度比能量等效性预测的要平缓得多（不那么负）。这一发现意味着较大体型动物之间的能量通量更大，最大的物种使用的能量比最小的物种多两个数量级。我们的结果否定了能量等效性作为预测性规则的传统解释。然而，大小-密度指数的一些变化与觅食的几何约束模型是一致的。
