During a step-change in exercise power output (PO), ventilation () increases with a similar time course to the rate of carbon dioxide delivery to the lungs (. To test the strength of this coupling, we compared and kinetics from ten independent exercise transitions performed within the moderate-intensity domain. Thirteen males completed 3-5 repetitions of ∆40 W step transitions initiated from 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 W on a cycle ergometer. Preceding the ∆40 W step transitions from 60, 80, 100, and 120 W was a 6 min bout of 20 W cycling from which the transitions of variable ∆PO were examined. Gas exchange ( and oxygen uptake, ) and were measured by mass spectrometry and volume turbine. The kinetics of the responses were characterized by the time constant (τ) and amplitude (Δ/Δ). Overall, kinetics were consistently slower than kinetics (by ~ 45%) and τ rose progressively with increasing baseline PO and with heightened ∆PO from a common baseline. Compared to τ, τ was on average slightly greater (by ~ 4 s). Repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed that there was no interaction between τ and τ in either the variable baseline (p = 0.49) and constant baseline (p = 0.56) conditions indicating that each changed in unison. Additionally, for Δ/Δ, there was no effect of either variable baseline PO (p = 0.05) or increasing ΔPO (p = 0.16). These data provide further evidence that, within the moderate-intensity domain, both the temporal- and amplitude-based characteristics of V̇ kinetics are inextricably linked to those of .