The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A general basis for quarter-power scaling in animals
Open accessAbstract
It has been known for decades that the metabolic rate of animals scales with body mass with an exponent that is almost always <1, >2/3, and often very close to 3/4. The 3/4 exponent emerges naturally from two models of resource distribution networks, radial explosion and hierarchically branched, which incorporate a minimum of specific details. Both models show that the exponent is 2/3 if velocity of flow remains constant, but can attain a maximum value of 3/4 if velocity scales with its maximum exponent, 1/12. Quarter-power scaling can arise even when there is no underlying fractality. The canonical “fourth dimension” in biological scaling relations can result from matching the velocity of flow through the network to the linear dimension of the terminal “service volume” where resources are consumed. These models have broad applicability for the optimal design of biological and engineered systems where energy, materials, or information are distributed from a single source.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology
West, G. B., Brown, J. H., & Enquist, B. J. (1997) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.276.5309.122 · Cited by 5,016
Self-citationScaling: Why is Animal Size so Important?
Schmidt-Nielsen, K. (1984) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139167826 · Cited by 2,677
The Fourth Dimension of Life: Fractal Geometry and Allometric Scaling of Organisms
West, G. B., Brown, J. H., & Enquist, B. J. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.284.5420.1677 · Cited by 1,718 · cited 1×
“The canonization of “Kleiber’s law” of M3/4 scaling of metabolic rate has led to a search for the “fourth dimension of life” (3, 34, 35).”
BackgroundRe-Examination of the “3/4-Law” of Metabolism
DODDS, P. S., ROTHMAN, D. H., & WEITZ, J. S. (2001) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1006/jtbi.2000.2238 · Cited by 589
Cited by
A Simple Practice Guide for Dose Conversion between Animals and Human
Nair, A., & Jacob, S. (2016) · Journal of Basic and Clinical Pharmacy · doi:10.4103/0976-0105.177703 · Cited by 6,174
Nair, A., Morsy, M. A., & Jacob, S. (2018) · Drug Development Research · doi:10.1002/ddr.21461 · Cited by 474
Wright, J., Bolstad, G. H., Araya‐Ajoy, Y. G., & Dingemanse, N. J. (2019) · Biological Reviews · doi:10.1111/brv.12451 · Cited by 175
On being the right size: scaling effects in designing a human-on-a-chip
Moraes, C., Labuz, J. M., Leung, B. M., Inoue, M., Chun, T.-H., & Takayama, S. (2013) · Integrative Biology · doi:10.1039/c3ib40040a · Cited by 134
Growth, metabolic partitioning, and the size of microorganisms
Kempes, C. P., Dutkiewicz, S., & Follows, M. J. (2012) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1115585109 · Cited by 132
Metadata
- Authors
- Banavar, J. R., Moses, M. E., Brown, J. H., Damuth, J., Rinaldo, A., Sibly, R. M., & Maritan, A.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-08-19
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- 15816-15820
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2142366069
- Cited by
- 212
- References
- 4
- FWCI
- 15.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A general basis for quarter-power scaling in animals. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1073/pnas.1009974107
- The paper
- Banavar, J. R., Moses, M. E., Brown, J. H., Damuth, J., Rinaldo, A., Sibly, R. M., & Maritan, A. (2010). A general basis for quarter-power scaling in animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1009974107
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.