Theory for relationships between thermal traits and body size

Develop a mechanistic theory that explains and predicts the documented empirical relationships between organismal body size and thermal response traits (e.g., minimum temperature T_min, thermal range T_ran, maximum temperature T_max, and optimum temperature T_opt) across taxa.

Background

The literature reports empirical relationships between body size and thermal traits (e.g., minimum temperature and range), as well as between thermal conduction-related quantities and size. However, the authors note a lack of a general theory explaining these patterns.

They suggest their framework could help illuminate principles behind these relationships, but acknowledge that a theory is currently absent.

References

As far as we know there is no theory for the documented relationships between thermal traits and body size.

— Toward a General Theory for the Scaling and Universality of Thermal Responses in Biology  (2503.05128 - Arroyo et al., 7 Mar 2025) in Box 2, Scaling behavior in thermal performances

We cannot formally exclude a weaker buffering effect, or one operating at finer temporal or spatial resolution than captured by maxt.

— Body size predicts how long ant workers live - but not how they age or how they die from heat  (2608.14245 - Moscardi et al., 14 Aug 2026) in Discussion, Section 4.1, “Duration is associated with intrinsic physiology (Claim 1)”