Sizing Up Allometric Scaling Theory
Figure 10
Dependency of the scaling exponent on body mass range as determined by ordinary least squares regression on empirical data.
The data are binned in orders of magnitude for body mass as described in the text. (A) Cumulative binning starting with smallest mammals. (B) Cumulative binning starting from largest mammals. (C) Exponents from individual order-of-magnitude bins. The exponents computed from these aggregations of empirical data vary both above and below 3/4. Note, however, that in all cases the allometric exponents tend to increase with increasing body mass. The error bars represent the 95% confidence intervals. When data is scarce, the confidence intervals become so large that the exponents cannot be trusted. (The full range of some error bars is cut off by the scale of the plots.)