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Allometry

How reliable is the biological time clock?

Nature volume 424, pages 269–270 (2003)Cite this article

A theoretical framework that describes the effect of temperature and body size on biological processes has long been sought. Gillooly et al.1 use an elegant combination of the first principles of biochemical kinetics and allometric growth to derive a general definition of biological time by which, simply from a knowledge of how warm and how large an animal is, it is possible to calculate how long it will take to develop. Here I argue that their application of chemical kinetics in formulating the theory is problematical, undermining their claim that the theory fits the evidence.

Gillooly et al.1 build on their equations for metabolism (B; ref. 2) to predict that plots of ln(t/m1/4) against Tc/(1 + (Tc/273)), where t is the development time, Tc is the animal's temperature in degrees Celsius, and m is its mass, yield a universal straight line with a common slope α = −Ē/kT02, where E is the average activation energy for metabolic reactions, k is Boltzmann's factor and T0 = 273 K. However, this relation is neither linear nor universal.

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Figure 1: Effect of temperature on mass-corrected development time.

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  1. Plymouth Marine Laboratory, The Hoe, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK

    Ángel López-Urrutia

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  1. Ángel López-Urrutia
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Correspondence to Ángel López-Urrutia.

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López-Urrutia, Á. How reliable is the biological time clock?. Nature 424, 269–270 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/424269a

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