Paper: Energetics of the smallest - do bacteria breathe at the same rate as whales?

Energetics of the smallest: do bacteria breathe at the same rate as whales?

Anastassia M. Makarieva (A1 A2), Victor G. Gorshkov (A1), Bai-Lian Li (A2)
(A1) Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute Theoretical Physics Division
Russian Academy of Sciences, 188300, Gatchina, St Petersburg, Russia
(A2) University of California Ecological Complexity and Modeling Laboratory,
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences Riverside, CA 92521-0124, USA

Abstract:
Power laws describing the dependence of metabolic rate on body mass have
been established for many taxa, but not for prokaryotes, despite the
ecological dominance of the smallest living beings. Our analysis of 80
prokaryote species with cell volumes ranging more than 1000000-fold revealed
no significant relationship between mass-specific metabolic rate q and cell
mass. By absolute values, mean endogenous mass-specific metabolic rates of
non-growing bacteria are similar to basal rates of eukaryote unicells,
terrestrial arthropods and mammals. Maximum mass-specific metabolic rates
displayed by growing bacteria are close to the record tissue-specific
metabolic rates of insects, amphibia, birds and mammals. Minimum
mass-specific metabolic rates of prokaryotes coincide with those of larger
organisms in various energy-saving regimes: sit-and-wait strategists in
arthropods, poikilotherms surviving anoxia, hibernating mammals. These
observations suggest a size-independent value around which the mass-specific
metabolic rates vary bounded by universal upper and lower limits in all body
size intervals.

Abstract and Full Text Links at The Royal Society
http://tinyurl.com/74oc7

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


.