Ingestion rate and body size in phagotrophic organisms

Abstract

A general functional relationship between body weight (10−11 to 108 g) and ingestion rate has been found to exist throughout the protistan and metazoan kingdoms. Results, based on a mathematical interpretation of standardized, quantitative data, indicate that ingestion rate is a log–log linear function (i.e., power function) of body weight (I = a W0.829 for cold-blooded forms and I = a W0.778 for warm-blooded forms, where I = ingestion rate and W = body weight). The slopes of the cold-blooded and warm-blooded regression lines are not significantly different from each other (i.e., they are parallel). This allows one to use the difference between the respective curves to estimate the weight-specific cost of warm-bloodedness. Such an analysis of the data indicates that a warm-blooded organism must ingest about ten times more food per unit body weight than cold-blooded forms. This functional relationship may be a manifestation of the physiological constraints placed on organisms by surface area to volume ratio phenomena, related to absorptive surfaces, mouth areas, and body volumes. The present analysis suggests that flexibility in functional design is limited by physical phenomena which affect phenotypic plasticity.