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12 - Interplay between individual growth and population feedbacks shapes body-size distributions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

By
Lennart Persson  and
André M. De Roos
Edited by
Alan G. Hildrew ,
David G. Raffaelli  and
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
Lennart Persson
Affiliation:
Umeå University Sweden
André M. De Roos
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam The Netherlands
Alan G. Hildrew
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
David G. Raffaelli
Affiliation:
University of York
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
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Summary

Body size in contemporary ecology

Body size and variation in body size have formed the focus of many studies in ecology, ranging from the study of individual performance to large-scale communities and ecosystems (Werner & Gilliam, 1984, Gaston & Lawton, 1988, Werner, 1988, Cohen, Johnson & Carpenter, 2003, Brown et al., 2004, Loeuille & Loreau, 2005). This focus is well-founded given the large variation in body size that exists among organisms from micro-organisms to large mammals (Gaston & Lawton, 1988; Werner, 1988). Body size is also the most important trait that affects the performance of individuals. Basic ecological capacities such as foraging rate and metabolic requirements are close functions of body size (Peters, 1983; Kooijmann, 2000; Brown, et al., 2004) affecting, for example, competitive abilities of differently sized organisms (Wilson, 1975; Persson, 1985; Werner, 1994). Body size strongly influences the diet of consumers with mean prey size, but also the variation in the size of prey eaten, increasing with predator size (Wilson, 1975; Werner & Gilliam, 1984; Cohen et al., 2005; Woodward & Warren, this volume; Humphries, this volume). Furthermore, the risk for an organism being preyed upon is heavily influenced by its own body size as well as the body size of its potential predator (Polis, 1988; Werner, 1988; Claessen, De Roos & Persson, 2000).

Given its influence on basic individual ecological processes, body size has been an important variable in the investigation of larger ecological entities including communities, food webs and ecosystems.

Type
Chapter
Information
Body Size: The Structure and Function of Aquatic Ecosystems , pp. 225 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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