Macroevolution of Steep Interspecific Metabolic Allometry in an Old Insect Order
Daniel Schönberger, Moa Metz, Masahito Tsuboi, Giuseppe Bianco, Zachary C. DeVries, Andreas Nord, Erik I. Svensson · 2026
Read Macroevolution of Steep Interspecific Metabolic Allometry in an Old Insect Order by Daniel Schönberger, Moa Metz, Masahito Tsuboi, Giuseppe Bianco, Zachary C. DeVries, Andreas Nord, Erik I. Svensson (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13180310.txt.
Description
Daniel Schonberger and co-authors report a 2026 study of metabolism scaling in dragonflies and damselflies. Among warm blooded animals, metabolic rate scales with body size to the power of about three quarters, long read as a fixed law. Insects, though, are little studied on this point.
With family tree methods, the team traced the scaling slope across this old insect order. The slope came out near one, a straight isometry, not the classic fraction. Rates evolved in a gradual way with weak pull back and several shifts in peak values. Cell size and surface area did not explain the steep slope. The authors credit the high oxygen demand of flight and growth by cell count, not cell size.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Daniel Schönberger, Moa Metz, Masahito Tsuboi, Giuseppe Bianco, Zachary C. DeVries, Andreas Nord, Erik I. Svensson |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 50 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |