Underlying causes of the 3/4-power metabolic scaling

Determine the physical and biological mechanisms responsible for the empirically observed power-law scaling of metabolic heat dissipation with body mass across ontogeny and between species, including the frequent three-quarter exponent.

Background

The paper highlights the long-standing observation that metabolic rate (often quantified via heat dissipation) scales with body mass as a power function, with an exponent frequently near 3/4. Despite extensive paper across taxa and life stages, the causes of this general empirical pattern have been widely debated.

Within this work, the authors present DEB theory’s dual-pool framework as a mechanistic basis from which the scaling emerges due to surface area–volume relations and the maintenance requirements of structure versus reserve. They note the problem’s historical status as unsolved while arguing that DEB provides a physical explanation without invoking optimality assumptions.