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Cited by 658

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 32 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Evolution of Body Size: Consequences of an Energetic Definition of Fitness

Brown, James H., Marquet, Pablo A., Taper, Mark L.·1993·The American Naturalist
DOI 10.1086/285558
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Abstract

We develop a general model for the effect of body size on fitness. We define fitness as reproductive power, the rate of conversion of energy into offspring. Reproductive power is assumed to be limited by a two-step process: first, the rate of acquisition of energy from the environment, which scales allometrically as body mass raised to approximately the 0.75 power, and then the rate of conversion of energy into offspring, which scales as mass to approximately the -0.25 power. The model predicts (1) the distinctive right-skewed shape of the frequency distribution of logarithms of body sizes among species that is observed in a wide variety of organisms from bacteria to mammals; (2) a taxon-specific optimal body size, which for mammals is approximately 100 g and is supported by data on the body sizes of mammals on islands; and (3) that in each taxon the relationships between such life-history and ecological characteristics as longevity, clutch size, home range size, and population density will change both slope and sign on either side of the optimal size. An energetic definition of fitness has the potential to unify areas of ecology and evolutionary biology that have previously used models based on different currencies.

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Metadata

Authors
Brown, J. H., Marquet, P. A., & Taper, M. L.
Venue
The American Naturalist
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
1993-10
Volume
142
Issue
4
Pages
573-584
ISSN
  • 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5323
DOI
10.1086/285558
OpenAlex
W2035571842
Cited by
658
References
32
FWCI
11.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evolution of Body Size: Consequences of an Energetic Definition of Fitness. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/285558
The paper
Brown, J. H., Marquet, P. A., & Taper, M. L. (1993). Evolution of Body Size: Consequences of an Energetic Definition of Fitness. The American Naturalist. https://doi.org/10.1086/285558

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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.