The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) is the ecological component of the more general Metabolic Scaling Theory and Kleiber's law. It posits that the metabolic rate of organisms is the fundamental biological rate that governs most observed patterns in ecology. MTE is part of a larger set of theory known as metabolic scaling theory that attempts to provide a unified theory for the importance of metabolism in driving pattern and process in biology from the level of cells all the way to the biosphere.
James Hemphill Brown is an American biologist and academic.
Kleiber's law, named after Max Kleiber for his biology work in the early 1930s, is the observation that, for the vast majority of animals, an animal's metabolic rate scales to the 3⁄4 power of the animal's mass. Symbolically: if q0 is the animal's metabolic rate, and M is the animal's mass, then Kleiber's law states that q0~M3/4. Thus, over the same time span, a cat having a mass 100 times that of a mouse will consume only about 32 times the energy the mouse uses.
Allometry is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and finally behaviour, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892, by D'Arcy Thompson in 1917 in On Growth and Form and by Julian Huxley in 1932.
Alkane metathesis is a class of chemical reaction in which an alkane is rearranged to give a longer or shorter alkane product. It is similar to olefin metathesis, except that olefin metathesis cleaves and recreates a carbon-carbon double bond, but alkane metathesis operates on a carbon-carbon single bond.
The dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory is a formal metabolic theory which provides a single quantitative framework to dynamically describe the aspects of metabolism of all living organisms at the individual level, based on assumptions about energy uptake, storage, and utilization of various substances. The DEB theory adheres to stringent thermodynamic principles, is motivated by universally observed patterns, is non-species specific, and links different levels of biological organization as prescribed by the implications of energetics. Models based on the DEB theory have been successfully applied to over a 1000 species with real-life applications ranging from conservation, aquaculture, general ecology, and ecotoxicology. The theory is contributing to the theoretical underpinning of the emerging field of metabolic ecology.
In landscape ecology, landscape connectivity is, broadly, "the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource patches". Alternatively, connectivity may be a continuous property of the landscape and independent of patches and paths. Connectivity includes both structural connectivity and functional connectivity. Functional connectivity includes actual connectivity and potential connectivity in which movement paths are estimated using the life-history data.
The Womersley number is a dimensionless number in biofluid mechanics and biofluid dynamics. It is a dimensionless expression of the pulsatile flow frequency in relation to viscous effects. It is named after John R. Womersley (1907–1958) for his work with blood flow in arteries. The Womersley number is important in keeping dynamic similarity when scaling an experiment. An example of this is scaling up the vascular system for experimental study. The Womersley number is also important in determining the thickness of the boundary layer to see if entrance effects can be ignored.
Geoffrey Chang is a professor at the University of California, San Diego's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine. His laboratory focuses on the structural biology of integral membrane proteins, particularly exploring X-ray crystallography techniques for solving the tertiary structures of membrane proteins that are notoriously resistant to crystallization. The laboratory has specialized in structures of multidrug resistance transporter proteins in bacteria. In 2001, while a faculty member of The Scripps Research Institute, Chang was awarded a Beckman Young Investigators Award, designed to support researchers early in their academic careers, for his work on the structural biology of multidrug resistance. Chang announced a move from Scripps to neighboring UC San Diego in 2012.
Motilin receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor that binds motilin. Motilin in turn is an intestinal peptide that stimulates contraction of gut smooth muscle.
Evolutionary physiology is the study of the biological evolution of physiological structures and processes; that is, the manner in which the functional characteristics of individuals in a population of organisms have responded to natural selection across multiple generations during the history of the population. It is a sub-discipline of both physiology and evolutionary biology. Practitioners in the field come from a variety of backgrounds, including physiology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.
Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) is a type of environmental sex determination in which the temperatures experienced during embryonic/larval development determine the sex of the offspring. It is only observed in reptiles and teleost fish. TSD differs from the chromosomal sex-determination systems common among vertebrates. It is the most studied type of environmental sex determination (ESD). Some other conditions, e.g. density, pH, and environmental background color, are also observed to alter sex ratio, which could be classified either as temperature-dependent sex determination or temperature-dependent sex differentiation, depending on the involved mechanisms. As sex-determining mechanisms, TSD and genetic sex determination (GSD) should be considered in an equivalent manner, which can lead to reconsidering the status of fish species that are claimed to have TSD when submitted to extreme temperatures instead of the temperature experienced during development in the wild, since changes in sex ratio with temperature variation are ecologically and evolutionally relevant.
BAFF receptor, also known as tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 13C (TNFRSF13C) and BLyS receptor 3 (BR3), is a membrane protein of the TNF receptor superfamily which recognizes BAFF, an essential factor for B cell maturation and survival. In humans it is encoded by the TNFRSF13C gene.
D site of albumin promoter binding protein, also known as DBP, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the DBP gene.
G-protein coupled receptor-associated sorting protein 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the GPRASP1 gene.
Fractal analysis is assessing fractal characteristics of data. It consists of several methods to assign a fractal dimension and other fractal characteristics to a dataset which may be a theoretical dataset, or a pattern or signal extracted from phenomena including topography, natural geometric objects, ecology and aquatic sciences, sound, market fluctuations, heart rates, frequency domain in electroencephalography signals, digital images, molecular motion, and data science. Fractal analysis is now widely used in all areas of science. An important limitation of fractal analysis is that arriving at an empirically determined fractal dimension does not necessarily prove that a pattern is fractal; rather, other essential characteristics have to be considered. Fractal analysis is valuable in expanding our knowledge of the structure and function of various systems, and as a potential tool to mathematically assess novel areas of study. Fractal calculus was formulated which is a generalization of ordinary calculus
Stuart Leonard Pimm is an American-British biologist and theoretical ecologist specializing in scientific research of biodiversity and conservation biology.
Allometric engineering is the process of experimentally shifting the scaling relationships, for body size or shape, in a population of organisms. More specifically, the process of experimentally breaking the tight covariance evident among component traits of a complex phenotype by altering the variance of one trait relative to another. Typically, body size is one of the two traits. The measurements of the two traits are plotted against each other and the scaling relationship can be represented as: . Manipulations of this sort alter the scaling relationships either by shifting the intercept (b), slope (m) or both to create novel variants. These novel variants can then be tested for differences in performance or fitness. Through careful testing, one could sequentially test each component of a trait suite to determine how each part contributes to the function of the entire complex phenotype, and ultimately the fitness of the organism. This technique allows for comparison within or among biological groups differing in size by adjusting morphology to match one another and comparing their performances.
Gerard Ian Evan FRS, FMedSci is a British biologist and, since May 2022, Professor of Cancer Biology at King's College London and a principal group leader in the Francis Crick Institute. Prior to this he was Sir William Dunn Professor and Head of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge (2009-2022).
Brian Joseph Enquist is an American biologist and academic. Enquist is a Professor of Biology at the University of Arizona. He is also external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a biologist, plant biologist and an ecologist. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012 and the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in 2018.
