Clade-specific metabolic allometries in the non-avian reptiles


SOCIETY FOR INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY
2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (VAM)
January 3 – Febuary 28, 2021

Meeting Abstract


86-4  Sat Jan 2  Clade-specific metabolic allometries in the non-avian reptiles Giancarli, SM*; Dunham, AE; O’Connor, MP; Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA smg432@drexel.edu

For the past two decades the foremost hypothesis for the driver of metabolic allometries has been the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) despite considerable dispute since its conception. MTE posits that all metabolic allometries are a result of the optimization of the circulation of blood and resources throughout an organism’s body, and that these relationships have a universal allometric scale power of 0.75 with no variation between or among groups of organisms. Previously, we have found that the allometric slope of resting metabolism varied among clades in mammals and birds, along with inconsistencies in many of these clade-specific allometries with MTE’s proposed value. To investigate these relationships in ectotherms, we are now investigating whether or not this same clade specificity exists in the non-avian reptiles. Testing this hypothesis in the non-avian reptiles is of significance to us because, while a paraphyletic group, they are not endotherms and have metabolisms dependent on ambient temperature. The diversity of the non-avian reptiles also brings a variety of physiologies to consider in both our analyses and the interpretation of our data. We have compiled over 1000 resting metabolic measurements of over 200 non-avian reptile species, including body mass and temperature. A preliminary linear model (not phylogenetically corrected) shows an overall slope of around 0.77 and suggests significant influence of taxonomy at the ordinal level on both the slope and intercept. We impose a hypothesized allometric tree on the data to investigate taxonomic variation in metabolism and thermal effects at the sub-ordinal level.

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