红鲱鱼和烂鱼
Red herrings and rotten fish
摘要：
生物学中一个长期存在的问题是普遍存在的四分之一幂异速生长比例定律的起源，该定律将生物体的许多特征与从分子和微生物到生态系统和哺乳动物的整个生命谱中的体重（M）联系起来。特别是，整个生物体的代谢率，B=aM^b，其中a是分类依赖的归一化常数，b对于动物和植物都约等于3/4。最近Darveau等人（以下简称DSAH）提出了一个“多原因模型”，将B作为“代谢的多个贡献者之和”，B_i，假设其标度为M^（b_i）。他们获得的b平均值：基础率为0.78，最大活动率为0.86。在本说明中，我们表明DSAH包含严重的技术，理论和概念错误，包括对已发表数据和我们以前工作的歪曲。我们还表明，在实验误差范围内，没有经验证据表明，在有氧活动中增加B DSAH的建议。此外，由于DSAH只考虑哺乳动物的代谢率，并没有试图解释为什么其他类群的代谢率和不同生物体的许多其他属性也与四分之一的权力（包括他们的大部分输入数据），他们的公式很难是他们声称的“统一原则”。这些问题在韦伯和伯尼斯的评论中没有得到解决。
英文摘要：
A longstanding problem in biology has been the origin of pervasive quarter-power allometric scaling laws that relate many characteristics of organisms to body mass (M) across the entire spectrum of life from molecules and microbes to ecosystems and mammals. In particular, whole-organism metabolic rate, B=aM^b, where a is a taxon-dependent normalisation constant and b is approximately equal to 3/4 for both animals and plants. Recently Darveau et al. (hereafter referred to as DSAH) proposed a "multiple-causes model" for B as "the sum of multiple contributors to metabolism", B_i, which were assumed to scale as M^(b_i). They obtained for average values of b: 0.78 for the basal rate and 0.86 for the maximally active rate. In this note we show that DSAH contains serious technical, theoretical and conceptual errors, including misrepresentations of published data and of our previous work. We also show that, within experimental error, there is no empirical evidence for an increase in b during aerobic activity as suggested by DSAH. Moreover, since DSAH consider only metabolic rates of mammals and make no attempt to explain why metabolic rates for other taxa and many other attributes in diverse organisms also scale with quarter-powers (including most of their input data), their formulation is hardly the "unifying principle" they claim. These problems were not addressed in commentaries by Weibel and Burness.
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