Allometry
The study of how biological traits change with body size.
What is allometry?
Heat loss when liquid water changes to vapor.
What is evaporation?
If two objects have the same temperature but different sizes, the object that contains more total thermal energy.
What is the larger object?
Animals whose body temperature depends mostly on environmental temperature.
What are ectotherms?
Tuna maintain warmer muscle temperatures than the surrounding water through this heat-exchange system.
What is countercurrent heat exchange?
Smaller animals have ______ weight-specific metabolic rates than larger animals.
What are higher?
Heat emitted from objects is electromagnetic energy.
What is radiation?
The rate at which organisms use energy.
What is metabolic rate?
Animals that produce metabolic heat to maintain body temperature.
What are endotherms?
The ratio of maximal metabolic rate to resting metabolic rate.
What is aerobic scope?
The general allometric equation relating body size to physiological variables.
What is Y = aWᵇ?
Heat transfer between two solid objects in direct contact.
What is conduction?
The relationship between body temperature and metabolic rate in ectotherms is typically this type of curve
What is exponential?
Animals that maintain relatively constant body temperatures.
What are homeotherms?
The temperature range where performance declines, but survival is still possible.
What is the pejus range?
The exponent commonly observed for metabolic scaling across many animals
What is ~0.7?
Heat transfer between a solid object and moving air or water.
What is convection?
The coefficient that describes how metabolic rate changes with a 10°C temperature shift.
What is Q10?
A hibernating mammal that allows its body temperature to drop but periodically warms itself fits this category.
What is heterotherm?
Some insects warm their thorax during flight using this type of endothermy.
What is thoracic endothermy?
Which animal consumes the most oxygen per unit time: pygmy mouse, wood rat, gray squirrel, or desert cottontail?
What is a Desert cottontail?
(the largest animal → highest total metabolic rate)
Which factor besides temperature is most important for conduction, convection, and radiation?
What is surface area?
If Q10 = 2 and the metabolic rate at 10°C is 3 ml O₂/h, the rate at 20°C is this.
What is 6 ml O₂/h?
Lizards basking in sunlight to increase body temperature are using this strategy.
What is behavioral thermoregulation?
As water temperature increases, oxygen solubility decreases while metabolic demand increases. This mismatch forms the basis of which physiological theory explains thermal limits?
What is the Oxygen- and capacity-limited thermal tolerance?