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How Many Species Have Mass M

01 Feb 2009-The American Naturalist (The University of Chicago Press)-Vol. 173, Iss: 2, pp 256-263
TL;DR: Under this model, a specific trade‐off between the strength of within‐lineage drift toward larger masses (Cope’s rule) and the increased risk of extinction from increased mass is necessary to produce realistic mass distributions for both taxa.
Abstract: Within large taxonomic assemblages, the number of species with adult body mass M is characterized by a broad but asymmetric distribution, with the largest mass being orders of magnitude larger than the typical mass. This canonical shape can be explained by cladogenetic diffusion that is bounded below by a hard limit on viable species mass and above by extinction risks that increase weakly with mass. Here we introduce and analytically solve a simplified cladogenetic diffusion model. When appropriately parameterized, the diffusion‐reaction equation predicts mass distributions that are in good agreement with data on 4,002 terrestrial mammals from the late Quaternary and 8,617 extant bird species. Under this model, we show that a specific trade‐off between the strength of within‐lineage drift toward larger masses (Cope’s rule) and the increased risk of extinction from increased mass is necessary to produce realistic mass distributions for both taxa. We then make several predictions about the evoluti...

Summary (2 min read)

Introduction

  • Comparing the predictions of this simplified model with species mass data for the same 4,002 terrestrial mammals from the late Quaternary (Smith et al.
  • The authors then show that the model’s predictions, when appropriately parameterized, are also in good agreement with data for 8,617 extant avian species (Dunning 2007).

A Mathematically Solvable Version

  • The CE model, however, remains too complex for mathematical analysis, even though it omits many ecological and microevolutionary processes such as interspecific competition, predation, and population dynamics.
  • This model can then be used to make inferences about body mass evolution without resorting to laborious simulations.
  • For terrestrial mammals, recent empirical studies (Liow et al. 2008) support the assumption that the probability per unit time of a species becoming extinct pe(x) grows weakly with its mass.
  • Such a steady state should exist whenever all species within the taxon experience roughly the same set of macroevolutionary selective pressures, that is, under stable macroevolutionary conditions.
  • Including now the taxon-specific lower limit xmin on species mass implies the constraint for the steadyf(x ) p 0min state solution and allows us to eliminate one parameter from equation (3).

Mammalian Body Mass Evolution

  • The authors find that two alternative methods of choosing b, by numerically matching the modal masses of the model and the empirical data or by matching the expected maximum mass of the model with the observed maximum in the empirical data, produce similar results.
  • For simplicity, differences due to sexual dimorphism, geographic variation, and so on were ignored or averaged out.
  • The resulting fit (fig. 2A) is in good agreement with the empirical data, except for a slight overestimate of the number of species with mass near 1 kg, an underestimate of the number near 300 kg, and a slight misestimate of the number of very small-bodied species.
  • The deviations in the right tail are also seen in the CE model and may be due to, for example, phylogenetically correlated speciation or extinction events in the recent past.

Avian Body Mass Evolution

  • Unlike mammals, data on most other taxonomic groups are generally not sufficient to yield accurate estimates of the parameters m and b (but see Novack-Gottshall and Lanier 2008).
  • Avian species, however, present an interesting case for study using their model; the distribution of extant avian body masses (fig. 3A) is relatively well characterized (Dunning 2007), and evidence of a minimum species body mass Mmin is reasonable (Pearson 1950).
  • Like mammals, this groove passes through thev ≈ 0.5 point , implying that this test cannot rule out them p 0 possibility that Cope’s rule ( ) does not hold for them 1 0 evolution of birds.
  • This indicates that for a given diffusion bias m, a significantly larger extinction parameter b is required to produce a comparably realistic mass distribution.

Discussion and Conclusions

  • With respect to birds, their analysis leads us to make several concrete predictions about their evolution.
  • (2) The body masses ofM r Mmin large avian species ( ), like those for terrestrialM 1 20 g mammals, are constrained mainly by extinction risks that increase progressively with body mass.
  • From a more conceptual perspective, the similarity of the results for extant birds and Recent terrestrial mammals suggests that their evolutionary histories, in terms of the processes that govern the variation of species body sizes over evolutionary timescales, are fundamentally the same.
  • On the other hand, although the agreement of the simple diffusion-reaction model given in equation (4), when appropriately parameterized, and the observed mass distributions of Recent terrestrial mammals and extant birds is quite good, the model is obviously incomplete in many ways.

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vol. 173, no. 2 the american naturalist february 2009
How Many Species Have Mass M?
Aaron Clauset,
1,
*
David J. Schwab,
2
and Sidney Redner
1,3
1. Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501; 2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles,
California 90024; 3. Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Submitted June 16, 2008; Accepted August 25, 2008; Electronically published December 17, 2008
Online enhancements: color versions of figures.
abstract: Within large taxonomic assemblages, the number of spe-
cies with adult body mass M is characterized by a broad but asym-
metric distribution, with the largest mass being orders of magnitude
larger than the typical mass. This canonical shape can be explained
by cladogenetic diffusion that is bounded below by a hard limit on
viable species mass and above by extinction risks that increase weakly
with mass. Here we introduce and analytically solve a simplified
cladogenetic diffusion model. When appropriately parameterized, the
diffusion-reaction equation predicts mass distributions that are in
good agreement with data on 4,002 terrestrial mammals from the
late Quaternary and 8,617 extant bird species. Under this model, we
show that a specific trade-off between the strength of within-lineage
drift toward larger masses (Cope’s rule) and the increased risk of
extinction from increased mass is necessary to produce realistic mass
distributions for both taxa. We then make several predictions about
the evolution of avian species masses.
Keywords: macroevolution, species body mass distribution, diffusion,
Cope’s rule, mammals, birds.
Introduction
For a large taxonomic group under stable macroevolu-
tionary conditions, how many species have a mass M? This
question has wide implications for the evolution and dis-
tribution of many other species characteristics that cor-
relate strongly with body mass, including life span, life
history, habitat, metabolism, and extinction risk (Calder
1984; Brown 1995; Bennett and Owens 1997; Cardillo et
al. 2005).
Extant species, including mammals, birds, fish, and in-
sects, exhibit a canonical form of the species mass distri-
bution (Stanley 1973; Kozłowski and Gawelczyk 2002; Al-
len et al. 2006), in which the typical mass is an intermediate
value; for example, in mammals, the typical mass is that
of the common Pacific rat (Rattus exulans; 40 g). Larger
or smaller species, in turn, are significantly less common
* Corresponding author; e-mail: aaronc@santafe.edu.
Am. Nat. 2009. Vol. 173, pp. 256–263. 2009 by The University of Chicago.
0003-0147/2009/17302-50539$15.00. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1086/595760
but asymmetrically so; the largest species, such as the ex-
tinct imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator;10
7
g)
for terrestrial mammals, are many orders of magnitude
larger, while the smallest species are only a little smaller,
for example, the Remy’s pygmy shrew (Suncus remyi; 1.8
g).
The ubiquity of this distribution of species masses (fig.
1A) suggests the existence of a universal evolutionary
mechanism. A theoretical explanation of this distribution
may shed light both on the interaction between ecological
and macroevolutionary processes (Stanley 1975) and on
long-term trends in species mass (Alroy 2000a, 2000b),
including Cope’s rule, the oft-studied notion that species
mass tends to increase within a lineage over evolutionary
time (Stanley 1973; Alroy 1998). Clauset and Erwin (2008)
recently showed, by comparing extensive computer sim-
ulations with empirical data, that cladogenetic diffusion
in the presence of a taxon-specific lower limit on mass
M
min
and extinction risks that grow weakly with mass can
explain both the canonical form described above and the
precise form of the distribution of terrestrial mammal
masses.
Here, we present a simplified three-parameter version
of the Clauset and Erwin (CE) model for the species mass
distribution and solve this model in the steady state. Com-
paring the predictions of this simplified model with species
mass data for the same 4,002 terrestrial mammals from
the late Quaternary (Smith et al. 2003, 2007; henceforth
denoted “Recent” mammals, which includes species that
have become extinct during the Holocene), we reproduce
Clauset and Erwin’s results. We then show that the model’s
predictions, when appropriately parameterized, are also in
good agreement with data for 8,617 extant avian species
(Dunning 2007).
The Clauset-Erwin Model
Many models of the variation of species body mass over
evolutionary time assume a cladogenetic diffusion process
(Stanley 1973; McKinney 1990; McShea 1994; Kozłowski
and Gawelczyk 2002), where each descendant species’ mass

How Many Species Have Mass M? 257
Figure 1: A, Illustration of the similarity of the body mass distributions
for different taxonomic groups, using data for 4,002 Recent terrestrial
mammals (Smith et al. 2003, 2007) and 8,617 extant birds (Dunning
2007). For visual clarity, the empirical distributions have been smoothed
using a Gaussian kernel (Wasserman 2006) and rescaled to lay on the
same abscissa interval. B, Schematic showing the basic cladogenetic dif-
fusion process by which species mass varies over evolutionary time. The
mass of a descendant M
D
is related to the mass of its ancestor M
A
by a
random multiplicative factor l, which represents the total selective in-
fluence on species mass from all sources; that is, . A colorM p lM
DA
version of this figure is available in the online edition of the American
Naturalist.
M
D
is related to its ancestor’s mass M
A
by a random mul-
tiplicative factor l; that is, (fig. 1B), where lM p lM
DA
represents the total selective influence on the descendant
species’ mass from all sources. Clauset and Erwin (2008)
studied a family of such diffusion models, whose form and
parameters could be estimated empirically. Under their
model, the evolution of species mass is bounded on the
lower end by hard physiological limits, perhaps from met-
abolic (Pearson 1948, 1950; West et al. 2002) or morpho-
logical (Stanley 1973) constraints, and on the upper end
by an extinction risk that increases weakly with mass (Liow
et al. 2008). Near the lower limit, however, within-lineage
changes to body mass become increasingly biased toward
larger masses; that is, Aln lS increases as .M r M
min
Using model parameters estimated from ancestor-
descendant data on extinct North American terrestrial
mammals since the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (Al-
roy 2008), Clauset and Erwin simulated 60 million years
of mammalian body mass evolution and found that the
predicted distribution closely matches that of 4,002 Recent
terrestrial mammal species. They also found that simpler
diffusion models—for example, those that omitted the
lower limit, an increased extinction risk from increased
mass, or the increased bias toward larger masses as M r
—predicted significantly different distributions.M
min
Thus, these three mechanisms can explain not only the
canonical form of the species mass distribution but also
its taxon-specific shape.
A Mathematically Solvable Version
The CE model, however, remains too complex for math-
ematical analysis, even though it omits many ecological
and microevolutionary processes such as interspecific
competition, predation, and population dynamics. By sim-
plifying its assumptions slightly, we can formulate a dif-
fusion-reaction model of species body mass evolution,
which retains most of the key features of the CE model
and which can be mathematically analyzed. This model
can then be used to make inferences about body mass
evolution without resorting to laborious simulations.
Let denote the number of species with logarithmicf(x, t)
mass at time t; that is, we transform the CEx p lnM
model’s multiplicative diffusion process into an additive
diffusion process on a logarithmic scale. The cladogenesis
mechanism leads to two offspring species in which x r
. In the continuum limit, a value (Cope’sx lnl Aln lS
1 0
rule) corresponds to positive drift velocity in the equation
of motion for . In the CE model for terrestrial mam-f(x, t)
mals, the drift velocity was estimated from fossil data to
increase like M
1/4
near the lower limit on species mass, a
feature that Clauset and Erwin (2008) found was necessary
to accurately predict the number of small-bodied mam-
mals. (Whether this quarter-power form is related to the
quarter-power scaling commonly found elsewhere in the
body size literature [Savage et al. 2004] remains to be seen.)
For mathematical simplicity, however, we will ignore this
dependence at the expense of possibly misestimating the
number of small-bodied species. We also assume that se-
lection pressures on body mass are roughly independent,
implying that the distribution of changes l is approxi-
mately lognormal (but see Clauset and Erwin 2008).

258 The American Naturalist
The feature that two offspring are produced at each
update step corresponds to a population growth term in
the equation of motion that is proportional to f itself. The
extinction probability may also be represented by a loss
term that is proportional to f. For terrestrial mammals,
recent empirical studies (Liow et al. 2008) support the
assumption that the probability per unit time of a species
becoming extinct p
e
(x) grows weakly with its mass. The
CE model uses a simple parameterization of this behavior:
, where , which corresponds to anp (x) p A Bx B 0
e
extinction probability that grows logarithmically with spe-
cies mass.
Combining these three elements—diffusion, cladogen-
esis, and extinction—we may write the continuum equa-
tion of motion for the number of species with massf(x, t)
at time t asx p ln M
2
f f f
v p D (1 A Bx)f,(1)
2
t x x
where is the drift velocity (strength of Cope’s
v p Aln lS
rule) and the variance is the diffusion coef-
2
D p Aln lS
ficient. (In physics, eq. [1] is called the convection-
diffusion equation or the Fokker-Planck equation.) This
equation, however, omits the lower limit on species body
mass, which we incorporate momentarily.
The time-dependent equation of motion itself may be
useful for studying evolutionary trends in species body
mass or for making inferences about correlated extinction
or speciation events. For our purposes, however, we are
mainly interested in its stationary solution. Such a steady
state should exist whenever all species within the taxon
experience roughly the same set of macroevolutionary se-
lective pressures, that is, under stable macroevolutionary
conditions. To derive this solution, we set the time deriv-
ative in equation (1) to zero to obtain

f mf (a
, where , , , andbx)f p 0 m p
v/D a p (1 A)/D b p B/D
the prime denotes differentiation with respect to x.We
now eliminate the first derivative term by introducing
to transform the steady state equation to
mx/2
f p e w
2
m

w a ⫺⫺bx w p 0.
[( ) ]
4
This equation can be brought into the form of the standard
Airy’s differential equation (Abramowitz and Stegun
1972):

w zw p 0, (2)
where we introduce the new variable
1/3
z p b x
and the prime now denotes differentiation
2/3 2
b (a m /4)
with respect to z. The general solution to equation (2) is
, where Ai(z) and Bi(z) are thew(z) p c Ai(z) c Bi(z)
12
Airy functions. Since there can be no species with infinite
mass, we may set . The parameter c
1
is then deter-c p 0
2
mined by the normalization of f(x).
Thus, we can now write the species mass distribution
as
2
m
mx/2 1/3 2/3
f(x) eAib x ba .(3)
[()]
4
Including now the taxon-specific lower limit x
min
on spe-
cies mass implies the constraint for the steadyf(x ) p 0
min
state solution and allows us to eliminate one parameter
from equation (3). Using the fact that the first zero of the
Airy function is located at , which we nowz p 2.3381
0
require to coincide with , gives the constraintx p x
min
2
m
1/3 2/3
z p b x ba ,
0min
()
4
which we may solve for a. Inserting this result into equa-
tion (3) yields
mx/2 1/3
f(x) eAi[b (x x ) z ](4)
min 0
as the steady state solution for the species mass distribution.
If the lower limit x
min
is known, this simple-minded
model has only two parameters: m, associated with the
biased diffusion process, and b, associated with the ex-
tinction process. A positive bias in the diffusion m
1 0
(Cope’s rule) has several systematic effects on the distri-
bution of species masses: it (1) pushes the left tail of the
distribution away from the lower limit at x
min
, (2) shifts
the modal mass toward slightly larger values, and (3) ex-
tends the right tail of the distribution. In contrast, in-
creasing b implies that species become extinct with greater
probability for a given mass M, which contracts the right
tail of the distribution. For a given bias m and number of
species n, the parameter b also sets an effective upper limit
on the expected maximum observed mass within the taxon
without invoking a hard boundary, for example, from bio-
mechanical constraints (McMahon 1973).
Mammalian Body Mass Evolution
We now test the predictions of this simple mathematical
model using empirical data for 4,002 Recent terrestrial
mammals (Smith et al. 2003, 2007) and 8,617 birds (Dun-
ning 2007). In the former case, we take , theM p 1.8 g
min
size of the smallest known mammal, and we estimate
and (SE) from Al-
v p 0.109 0.021 D p 0.508 0.027

How Many Species Have Mass M? 259
Figure 2: A, Solution of the diffusion-reaction model of species body
mass evolution (eq. [4]) with (smoothed) empirical data for 4,002 ter-
restrial mammals from the late Quaternary. Parameters m and x
min
were
estimated from empirical data on extinct terrestrial mammals since the
Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, while b was chosen to minimize the
tail-weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov (wKS) distance between the model
and the empirical distribution. B, The plane of wKS distance of(m, b)
the specified model and the empirical data for terrestrial mammals
(lighter values correspond to smaller wKS). The distinctive groove (line)
demonstrates that a systematic relationship between the bias parameter
m and the extinction parameter b is necessary to produce realistic mass
distributions (small wKS). The parameter pair used in A is marked.
Dashes demarcate the line of no within-lineage bias ( ). A colorm p 0
version of this figure is available in the online edition of the American
Naturalist.
roy’s (2008) ancestor-descendant data for North American
terrestrial mammals. Incorporating these values into equa-
tion (4) leaves only b unspecified. A strong test of this
model would estimate b from fossil data; however, while
studies of extinction among mammals suggest that b
1 0
(Liow et al. 2008), current data do not appear to be suf-
ficiently detailed to give a precise estimate for mammals.
Instead, following Clauset and Erwin (2008), we choose
b by minimizing the tail-weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov
(wKS) goodness-of-fit statistic (Press et al. 1992) for the
predicted and empirical distributions:
FS(x) P(x)F
wKS p max ,
P(x)(1 P(x))
x
where S(x) is the empirical distribution function and P(x)
is the predicted cumulative distribution function. Thus,
small values of wKS correspond to a model that is statis-
tically close to the empirical data everywhere. We find that
two alternative methods of choosing b, by numerically
matching the modal masses of the model and the empirical
data or by matching the expected maximum mass of the
model with the observed maximum in the empirical data,
produce similar results.
For the interested reader, details on the preparation of
the empirical data are discussed at length by Alroy (1998)
and Smith et al. (2003, 2007) for mammalian fauna and
by Dunning (2007) for avian fauna. In general, body mass
estimates were derived using conventional techniques (e.g.,
dentition techniques for mammals; Damuth 1990). For
simplicity, differences due to sexual dimorphism, geo-
graphic variation, and so on were ignored or averaged out.
Although such differences can be critical for smaller stud-
ies, given the scale of our data in terms of the number of
species studied and the wide range of body masses, mild
misestimates of body masses are unlikely to change our
conclusions unless they are widespread and systematic.
The resulting fit (fig. 2A) is in good agreement with the
empirical data, except for a slight overestimate of the num-
ber of species with mass near 1 kg, an underestimate of
the number near 300 kg, and a slight misestimate of the
number of very small-bodied species. The deviations in
the right tail are also seen in the CE model and may be
due to, for example, phylogenetically correlated speciation
or extinction events in the recent past. The deviations in
the left tail may be due to our omission of the mass de-
pendence in the drift term m identified by Clauset and
Erwin (2008); however, incorporating this behavior into
our diffusion-reaction model is technically nontrivial.
Thus, the evolution of mammalian species body masses
can largely be viewed as a simple diffusion process char-
acterized by (1) a slight within-lineage drift toward larger
masses over evolutionary time (Cope’s rule), (2) a hard
lower boundary on how small body masses can become,
and (3) a very soft constraint on large body masses in the
form of increased extinction risk. Phrased more concep-
tually, the left tail of the mammalian body mass distri-

260 The American Naturalist
Figure 3: A, Steady state solution of the diffusion-reaction model of
species body mass evolution (eq. [4]), with , , and bm p 0 M p 2g
min
chosen to minimize the tail-weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov (wKS) dis-
tance between the model and the empirical distribution, with (smoothed)
empirical data for 8,617 avian species. B, The plane of wKS dis-(m, b)
tances (lighter values correspond to smaller wKS), showing a systematic
relationship between m and b for producing realistic (small wKS) avian
mass distributions. The form of this relationship is similar to that of
mammals (fig. 2B), suggesting a similar overall macroevolutionary mech-
anism. A color version of this figure is available in the online edition of
the American Naturalist.
bution is mainly controlled by the lower limit on mass,
while the right tail is the result of an evolutionary trade-
off at different timescales: over the short-term, within-
lineage increases in body mass offer selective advantages—
such as better tolerance of resource fluctuations, better
thermoregulation, better predator avoidance, and so on
(Calder 1984; Brown 1995)—while they also increase the
long-term risk of extinction, a trade-off previously iden-
tified in the more specific case of carnivorous mammals
(Van Valkenburgh 1999; Van Valkenburgh et al. 2004).
Avian Body Mass Evolution
Unlike mammals, data on most other taxonomic groups
are generally not sufficient to yield accurate estimates of
the parameters m and b (but see Novack-Gottshall and
Lanier 2008). The evolutionary history of mammalian
body masses is relatively clear, in part because mammalian
fossils are relatively plentiful and are often sufficiently well
preserved that body mass estimates can be made (Damuth
1990; Van Valkenburgh 1990) and because the distribution
of species body masses during an apparently stable evo-
lutionary period is known. Avian species, however, present
an interesting case for study using our model; the distri-
bution of extant avian body masses (fig. 3A) is relatively
well characterized (Dunning 2007), and evidence of a min-
imum species body mass M
min
is reasonable (Pearson
1950). However, the avian fossil record may be too sparse
to yield accurate estimates of m and b (Fountaine et al.
2005; Hone et al. 2008).
Even without estimates of m and b, however, the dif-
fusion model can be used to make quantitative statements
about the general character of avian body mass evolution.
To demonstrate this, we consider which combinations of
the parameters m, b produce “realistic” mass distributions,
that is, those with a small distributional distance to the
empirical distribution. In particular, we compute the wKS
distance between the model and the empirical data over
the plane and determine the regions that yield the(m, b)
best fits. To illustrate this technique in a better-understood
context, we first apply it to the data on Recent terrestrial
mammals, disregarding for the moment that we have an
estimate of m from fossil data.
The result of this exercise (fig. 2B) shows that realistic
mammalian mass distributions can be produced by a wide,
but not arbitrary, variety of biases m and extinction risks
b, including no bias at all; that is, . This degeneracy,m p 0
which forms a groove in the plane following roughly(m, b)
with , suggests that part of the difficulty in
v
m bv 0.5
determining for a particular taxon whether mass evolution
is biased toward larger sizes (see, e.g., Maurer et al. 1992;
Maurer 1998; Bokma 2002) is that a positive bias is not
a necessary condition for the evolution of realistic mass
distributions. Indirect tests of the sign of m, based either
on the mass distribution within subclades (McShea 1994;
Wang 2001) or on changes to minimum and maximum
masses within a subclade over geologic time (Jablonski
1997), may be adequate if confounding hypotheses can be
eliminated or if an appropriate null model is available. On

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review explanations for size-related and mass-independent variation in the basal metabolic rate (BMR) of animals, and suggest ways that the various explanations can be evaluated and integrated.
Abstract: Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of metabolism of a resting, postabsorptive, non-reproductive, adult bird or mammal, measured during the inactive circadian phase at a thermoneutral temperature. BMR is one of the most widely measured physiological traits, and data are available for over 1,200 species. With data available for such a wide range of species, BMR is a benchmark measurement in ecological and evolutionary physiology, and is often used as a reference against which other levels of metabolism are compared. Implicit in such comparisons is the assumption that BMR is invariant for a given species and that it therefore represents a stable point of comparison. However, BMR shows substantial variation between individuals, populations and species. Investigation of the ultimate (evolutionary) explanations for these differences remains an active area of inquiry, and explanation of size-related trends remains a contentious area. Whereas explanations for the scaling of BMR are generally mechanistic and claim ties to the first principles of chemistry and physics, investigations of mass-independent variation typically take an evolutionary perspective and have demonstrated that BMR is ultimately linked with a range of extrinsic variables including diet, habitat temperature, and net primary productivity. Here we review explanations for size-related and mass-independent variation in the BMR of animals, and suggest ways that the various explanations can be evaluated and integrated.

171 citations


Cites background from "How Many Species Have Mass M"

  • ...…more realistic by the introduction of size-biased selection and extinction, and anagenetic size change within species between speciation and extinction events (e.g. Stanley 1973; Maurer et al. 1992; Kingsolver and Pfennig 2004; Clauset and Erwin 2008; Mattila and Bokma 2008; Clauset et al. 2009)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: No single relationship is appropriate for describing the relationship between MR and M for all mammals, and that relationships for more narrow taxonomic groups or body mass ranges should be used when predicting MR from M.
Abstract: The relationship between body mass (M) and metabolic rate (MR) typically accounts for most (>90%) of the inter-specific variation in MR. As such, when measurement of a species of interest is not possible, its MR can often be predicted using M. However, choosing an appropriate relationship to make such predictions is critical, and the choice is complicated by ongoing debate about the structure of the relationship between M and MR. The present study examines a range of methods including ordinary least squares (OLS), reduced major axis (RMA), and phylogenetically-informed (PI) approaches for estimating log(MR) from log(M), as well as non-linear approaches for estimating the relationship between MR and M without the need for log-transformation. Using data for the basal metabolic rates of mammals, it is shown that RMA regression overestimates the scaling exponent of MR (b, where MR=aM(b)), suggesting that OLS regression is appropriate for these data. PI approaches are preferred over non-PI ones, and the best estimates of log(MR) are obtained by including information on body temperature, climate, habitat, island endemism, and use of torpor in addition to log(M). However, the use of log-transformed data introduces bias into estimates of MR, while the use of non-linear regression underestimates MR for small mammals. This suggests that no single relationship is appropriate for describing the relationship between MR and M for all mammals, and that relationships for more narrow taxonomic groups or body mass ranges should be used when predicting MR from M.

68 citations


Cites background from "How Many Species Have Mass M"

  • ...…with size-biased selection and extinction, as well as some anagenetic size change within species between speciation and extinction events (e.g. Stanley, 1973; Maurer et al., 1992; McShea, 1994; Kingsolver and Pfennig, 2004; Clauset and Erwin, 2008; Mattila and Bokma, 2008; Clauset et al., 2009)....

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  • ...Body size is therefore thought to evolve multiplicatively, but with size-biased selection and extinction, as well as some anagenetic size change within species between speciation and extinction events (e.g. Stanley, 1973; Maurer et al., 1992; McShea, 1994; Kingsolver and Pfennig, 2004; Clauset and Erwin, 2008; Mattila and Bokma, 2008; Clauset et al., 2009)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: These results indicate that sister species occupy similar positions on the earth's surface, and that the expansion of the geographic range during the existence of a given genus is driven by range expansion of one or more of the species it includes, rather than simply being the summation of these species ranges.
Abstract: Temporal patterns in species occupancy and geographic range size are a major topic in evolutionary ecology research. Here we investigate these patterns in Pliocene to Recent large mammal species and genera in Western Eurasia. By using an extensively sampled fossil record including some 700 fossil localities, we found occupancy and range size trajectories over time to be predominantly peaked among both species and genera, meaning that occupancy and range size reached their maxima midway along taxon existence. These metrics are strongly correlated with each other and to body size, after phylogeny is accounted for by using two different phylogenetic topologies for both species and genera. Phylogenetic signal is strong in body size, and weaker but significant in both occupancy and range size mean values among genera, indicating that these variables are heritable. The intensity of phylogenetic signal is much weaker and often not significant at the species level. This suggests that within genera, occupancy and range size are somewhat variable. However, sister taxa inherit geographic position (the center of their geographic distribution). Taken together, the latter two results indicate that sister species occupy similar positions on the earth's surface, and that the expansion of the geographic range during the existence of a given genus is driven by range expansion of one or more of the species it includes, rather than simply being the summation of these species ranges.

45 citations


Cites background from "How Many Species Have Mass M"

  • ...Within taxonomic groups, the log right-skewed distribution is the norm within mammals, birds, and insects (Clauset and Erwin 2008; Clauset et al. 2009), but not within marine bivalves (Roy et al. 2002)....

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References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The framework of a general model of fractal-like distribution networks together with data on energy transformation in mammals is used to analyze and predict allometric scaling of aerobic metabolism over a remarkable 27 orders of magnitude in mass encompassing four levels of organization: individual organisms, single cells, intact mitochondria, and enzyme molecules.
Abstract: The fact that metabolic rate scales as the three-quarter power of body mass (M) in unicellular, as well as multicellular, organisms suggests that the same principles of biological design operate at multiple levels of organization. We use the framework of a general model of fractal-like distribution networks together with data on energy transformation in mammals to analyze and predict allometric scaling of aerobic metabolism over a remarkable 27 orders of magnitude in mass encompassing four levels of organization: individual organisms, single cells, intact mitochondria, and enzyme molecules. We show that, whereas rates of cellular metabolism in vivo scale as M−1/4, rates for cells in culture converge to a single predicted value for all mammals regardless of size. Furthermore, a single three-quarter power allometric scaling law characterizes the basal metabolic rates of isolated mammalian cells, mitochondria, and molecules of the respiratory complex; this overlaps with and is indistinguishable from the scaling relationship for unicellular organisms. This observation suggests that aerobic energy transformation at all levels of biological organization is limited by the transport of materials through hierarchical fractal-like networks with the properties specified by the model. We show how the mass of the smallest mammal can be calculated (≈1 g), and the observed numbers and densities of mitochondria and respiratory complexes in mammalian cells can be understood. Extending theoretical and empirical analyses of scaling to suborganismal levels potentially has important implications for cellular structure and function as well as for the metabolic basis of aging.

624 citations


"How Many Species Have Mass M" refers background in this paper

  • ...cal limits, perhaps from metabolic (Pearson, 1948, 1950; West et al., 2002) or morphological constraints (Stanley, 1973), and on the upper end by an extinction risk that increases weakly with mass (Liow et al....

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  • ...…their model, the evolution of species mass is bounded on the lower end by hard physiologi- 2 cal limits, perhaps from metabolic (Pearson, 1948, 1950; West et al., 2002) or morphological constraints (Stanley, 1973), and on the upper end by an extinction risk that increases weakly with mass (Liow…...

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Rates of speciation can be estimated for living taxa by means of the equation for exponential increase, and are clearly higher for mammals than for bivalve mollusks.
Abstract: Gradual evolutionary change by natural selection operates so slowly within established species that it cannot account for the major features of evolution. Evolutionary change tends to be concentrated within speciation events. The direction of transpecific evolution is determined by the process of species selection, which is analogous to natural selection but acts upon species within higher taxa rather than upon individuals within populations. Species selection operates on variation provided by the largely random process of speciation and favors species that speciate at high rates or survive for long periods and therefore tend to leave many daughter species. Rates of speciation can be estimated for living taxa by means of the equation for exponential increase, and are clearly higher for mammals than for bivalve mollusks.

598 citations


"How Many Species Have Mass M" refers background in this paper

  • ...A theoretical explanation of this distribution may shed light both on the interaction between ecological and macroevolutionary processes (Stanley, 1975), and on long-term trends in species mass (Alroy,...

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  • ...A theoretical explanation of this distribution may shed light both on the interaction between ecological and macroevolutionary processes (Stanley, 1975), and on long-term trends in species mass (Alroy, ∗This manuscript is a pre-print version that has not undergone final editing....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Most modern interpreters of Cope's Rule have attributed its validity solely to certain fundamental advantages of size increase, at least one of which is alleged to have operated within most evolutionary lineages.
Abstract: Cope's Rule is the name customarily applied to the widespread tendency of animal groups to evolve toward larger physical size. According to Kurten (1953), this paleontologic rule of evolution "is second in repute only to 'Dollo's Law' of . . .irreversibility." Although the rule was never concisely formulated by Cope, it is generally implicit in his writings (Cope, 1887, 1896). Like many other evolutionary generalizations extracted from the fossil record, Cope's Rule was derived primarily from study of mammalian phylogeny. Writers like Deperet (1909), Newell (1949), and Rensch (1959) have added diverse examples of evolutionary size increase to the mammalian trends discussed by Cope. Because numerous exceptions are known, recognition of the concept as a law has been rejected by most workers. Still, it has been widely upheld as a valid empirical generalization, and of the definitions for "rule" listed by Webster, "a generally prevailing condition," describes it accurately. Most modern interpreters of Cope's Rule have attributed its validity solely to certain fundamental advantages of size increase, at least one of which is alleged to have operated within most evolutionary lineages (Newell, 1949, p. 122-123; Kurten, 1953, p. 105; Simpson, 1953, p. 151; Rensch, 1959, p. 210-211; Gould, 1966b, p. 1138). Most of the proposed advantages of evolutionary size increase have been reviewed by Newell (1949), Kurten (1953), Rensch (1959), and Gould (1966a). Among the more salient are: improved ability to capture prey or ward off predators, greater reproductive success, increased intelligence (with increased brain size), better stamina, expanded size range of acceptable food, decreased annual mortality, extended individual longevity, and increased heat retention per unit volume. Certainly when evolutionary size increase occurs, it is in response to selection pressure resulting from one or more advantages. As Bonner (1968) pointed out, however, a net trend toward increased size within a higher taxon usually produces an increase in mean and maximum animal size, but not necessarily in minimum animal size. Selection pressure favoring size decrease is not rare but only less common than pressure favoring size increase. Reliance solely on inherent advantages of larger size to explain the high incidence of size increase suffers from deficiencies resembling some of those attached to the discarded concept of orthogenesis. The "inherent advantage" idea attempts only to account for directional evolution, without reference to limits. Clearly when size increase occurs in a

582 citations


"How Many Species Have Mass M" refers background or result in this paper

  • ...…mammals, birds, fish and insects, exhibit a canonical form of the species mass distribution (Allen et al., 2006; Koz lowski and Gawelczyk, 2002; Stanley, 1973), in which the typical mass is an intermediate value; for example, in mammals the typical mass is that of the common Pacific Rat…...

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  • ...†Electronic address: aaronc@santafe.edu ‡Electronic address: djs47@physics.ucla.edu §Electronic address: redner@bu.edu 2000a,b), including Cope’s rule, the oft-studied notion that species mass tends to increase within a lineage over evolutionary time (Alroy, 1998; Stanley, 1973)....

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  • ...…of species body mass over evolutionary time assume a cladogenetic diffusion process (Koz lowski and Gawelczyk, 2002; McKinney, 1990; McShea, 1994; Stanley, 1973) where each descendant species’ mass MD is related to its ancestor’s mass MA by a random multiplicative factor λ, i.e., MD = λMA (Fig....

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  • ..., 2002) or morphological constraints (Stanley, 1973), and on the upper end by an extinction risk that increases weakly with mass (Liow et al....

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  • ...This behavior lends some support to the hypothesis that the left tail’s particular shape is caused by strong physiological constraints on body mass evolution near the avian lower limit (Stanley, 1973), which are not included in our model....

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 May 1998-Science
TL;DR: Body mass estimates for 1534 North American fossil mammal species show that new species are on average 9.1% larger than older species in the same genera, which partially explains the unwavering lower size limit and the gradually expanding mid-sized gap.
Abstract: Body mass estimates for 1534 North American fossil mammal species show that new species are on average 91% larger than older species in the same genera This within-lineage effect is not a sampling bias It persists throughout the Cenozoic, accounting for the gradual overall increase in average mass (Cope's rule) The effect is stronger for larger mammals, being near zero for small mammals This variation partially explains the unwavering lower size limit and the gradually expanding mid-sized gap, but not the sudden large increase in the upper size limit, at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary

454 citations


"How Many Species Have Mass M" refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...edu 2000a,b), including Cope’s rule, the oft-studied notion that species mass tends to increase within a lineage over evolutionary time (Alroy, 1998; Stanley, 1973)....

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  • ...For the interested reader, details on the preparation of the empirical data are discussed at length by Alroy (1998) and Smith et al. (2003) for mammalian fauna, and by Dunning Jr. (2007) for avian fauna....

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  • ...On the other hand, the most accurate method remains the direct analysis of large amounts of ancestor-descendant data (Alroy, 1998, 2000b; Novack-Gottshall and Lanier, 2008), preferably when derived from as realistic a phylogeny as possible....

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  • ...†Electronic address: aaronc@santafe.edu ‡Electronic address: djs47@physics.ucla.edu §Electronic address: redner@bu.edu 2000a,b), including Cope’s rule, the oft-studied notion that species mass tends to increase within a lineage over evolutionary time (Alroy, 1998; Stanley, 1973)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2003-Ecology
TL;DR: The purpose of this data set was to compile body mass information for all mammals on Earth so that it could investigate the patterns of body mass seen across geographic and taxonomic space and evolutionary time.
Abstract: The purpose of this data set was to compile body mass information for all mammals on Earth so that we could investigate the patterns of body mass seen across geographic and taxonomic space and evolutionary time. We were interested in the heritability of body size across taxonomic groups (How conserved is body mass within a genus, family, and order?), in the overall pattern of body mass across continents (Do the moments and other descriptive statistics remain the same across geographic space?), and over evolutionary time (How quickly did body mass patterns iterate on the patterns seen today? Were the Pleistocene extinctions size specific on each continent, and did these events coincide with the arrival of man?). These data are also part of a larger project that seeks to integrate body mass patterns across very diverse taxa (NCEAS Working Group on Body Size in Ecology and Paleoecology: linking pattern and process across space, time, and taxonomic scales). We began with the updated version of D. E. Wilson an...

452 citations


"How Many Species Have Mass M" refers background or methods or result in this paper

  • ...For the interested reader, details on the preparation of the empirical data are discussed at length by Alroy (1998) and Smith et al. (2003) for mammalian fauna, and by Dunning Jr. (2007) for avian fauna....

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  • ...We now test the predictions of this simple mathematical model using empirical data for 4002 Recent terrestrial mammals (Smith et al., 2003) and 8617 birds (Dunning Jr....

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  • ...Comparing the predictions of this simplified model with species mass data for the same 4002 terrestrial mammals from the late Quaternary (Smith et al., 2003) (henceforth denoted “Recent” mammals, which includes species that have become extinct during the Holocene), we reproduce Clauset and Erwin’s…...

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  • ...for 4002 Recent terrestrial mammals (Smith et al., 2003) and 8617 extant birds (Dunning Jr....

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  • ...2 (a) The solution of the diffusion-reaction model of species body mass evolution [Equation (4)] with (smoothed) empirical data for 4002 terrestrial mammals from the late Quaternary....

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Frequently Asked Questions (2)
Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "How many species have mass m?" ?

Here the authors introduce and analytically solve a simplified cladogenetic diffusion model. Under this model, the authors show that a specific trade-off between the strength of within-lineage drift toward larger masses ( Cope ’ s rule ) and the increased risk of extinction from increased mass is necessary to produce realistic mass distributions for both taxa. 

The similarity of these distributions to those of other taxonomic groups suggests that this explanation may be universal, although further empirical work is necessary to substantiate this hypothesis. The authors conclude by noting that the model ’ s good agreement with data suggests that it may be a useful way to establish null expectations in the study of general trends in body mass evolution ( much like diffusion models in population genetics ; Hartl and Clark 2007 ) in the absence of factors such as interspecific competition, population dynamics, geography, predation, and so on.