An oversimplification of physiological principles leads to flawed macroecological analyses

Boyles, Justin G; Levesque, Danielle L; Nowack, Julia; Wojciechowski, Michal S; Stawski, Clare; Fuller, Andrea; Smit, Ben; Tattersall, Glenn J

Title: An oversimplification of physiological principles leads to flawed macroecological analyses
Creator: Boyles, Justin G
Creator: Levesque, Danielle L
Creator: Nowack, Julia
Creator: Wojciechowski, Michal S
Creator: Stawski, Clare
Creator: Fuller, Andrea
Creator: Smit, Ben
Creator: Tattersall, Glenn J
Subject: To be catalogued
Date Issued: 2019
Date: 2019
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/440505
Identifier: vital:73788
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5721
Description: In light of the rapidly changing climate, there is an urgent need to develop a mechanistic understanding of how physiological functioning mediates ecological patterns. Recently, there has been a spate of papers using analyses that scale up from a standard physiological model, the Scholander–Irving model, to make predictions about range constraints on endothermic vertebrates (Buckley, Khaliq, Swanson, and Hof, 2018; Fristoe et al., 2015; Khaliq, Böhning‐Gaese, Prinzinger, Pfenninger, and Hof, 2017; Khaliq, Hof, Prinzinger, Böhning‐Gaese, and Pfenninger, 2014). Here, we argue that oversimplifications of the Scholander–Irving model and the use of questionable datasets lead to questionable macrophysiological analyses. Many of these problems have been addressed elsewhere, directly and indirectly (eg, McKechnie, Coe, Gerson, and Wolf, 2017; Mitchell et al., 2018), although the focus has largely been on the applicability of the Scholander–Irving model to warm environmental temperatures, which are often seen as more relevant to climate change. However, one specific aspect of the Scholander–Irving model, the assumption that energy expenditure of an endotherm below the thermoneutral zone (TNZ) can be described by basic Newtonian physics, has been used incorrectly in several papers. While not the only paper based on this assumption, the recent work by Buckley et al.(2018) reinvigorated discussions among physiologists about improper interpretations of the Scholander–Irving model. Our concerns are not new and have been voiced repeatedly in the past (Calder and Schmidt‐Nielsen, 1967; King, 1964; Tracy, 1972), but many of these ideas seem to have been buried by time.
Format: 6 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Ecology and Evolution
Relation: Boyles, J.G., Levesque, D.L., Nowack, J., Wojciechowski, M.S., Stawski, C., Fuller, A., Smit, B. and Tattersall, G.J., 2019. An oversimplification of physiological principles leads to flawed macroecological analyses. Ecology and Evolution, 9(21), pp.12020-12025.
Relation: Ecology and Evolution volume 9 number 21 12020 12025 2019
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Wiley Library Online Terms of Use Statement (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)

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