Shifts in metabolic scaling, production, and efficiency across major evolutionary transitions of life
Open accessAbstract
The diversification of life involved enormous increases in size and complexity. The evolutionary transitions from prokaryotes to unicellular eukaryotes to metazoans were accompanied by major innovations in metabolic design. Here we show that the scalings of metabolic rate, population growth rate, and production efficiency with body size have changed across the evolutionary transitions. Metabolic rate scales with body mass superlinearly in prokaryotes, linearly in protists, and sublinearly in metazoans, so Kleiber’s 3/4 power scaling law does not apply universally across organisms. The scaling of maximum population growth rate shifts from positive in prokaryotes to negative in protists and metazoans, and the efficiency of production declines across these groups. Major changes in metabolic processes during the early evolution of life overcame existing constraints, exploited new opportunities, and imposed new constraints.
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Because of the nature of these transitions, they are likely to be relevant in our understanding of macroevolutionary processes, ranging from punctuated equilibrium to the hierarchical nature of evolutionary change and the role that constraints play in setting transition points.
“Because of the nature of these transitions, they are likely to be relevant in our understanding of macroevolutionary processes, ranging from punctuated equilibrium [318] to the hierarchical nature of evolutionary change [346,347] and the role that constraints play in setting transition points [105,348,349].”
From Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems (2024) · cites this paper as [348]
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“…the nature of these transitions, they are likely to be relevant in our understanding of macroevolutionary processes, ranging from punctuated equilibrium [318] to the hierarchical nature of evolutionary change [346,347] and the role that constraints play in setting transition points [105,348,349].”
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- Authors
- DeLong, J. P., Okie, J. G., Moses, M. E., Sibly, R. M., & Brown, J. H.
- Affiliations
- University of New Mexico (US)
- University of Reading (GB)
- Santa Fe Institute (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-06-29
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 29
- Pages
- 12941-12945
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC2919978
- OpenAlex
- W2008310246
- Cited by
- 442
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 42 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 26 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 15.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology
- National Institutes of Health
- National Center for Research Resources (P20RR018754)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Physiological and biochemical adaptations
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Keywords
- metabolic scaling, Kleiber's law, body size, evolutionary transitions, prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes, protists, metazoans, population growth rate, production efficiency, metabolic rate, evolution of life
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Basal Metabolism, Body Weight, Biological Evolution, Models, Biological, Phylogeny, Prokaryotic Cells, Species Specificity, Genome, Biodiversity, Cell Size
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