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Comment
. 2015 May 19;112(20):6248-9.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1506305112. Epub 2015 May 6.

Embracing general theory and taxon-level idiosyncrasies to explain nutrient recycling

Diego R Barneche  1 , Andrew P Allen  2
Affiliations
Comment

Embracing general theory and taxon-level idiosyncrasies to explain nutrient recycling

Diego R Barneche et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Heterotrophic organisms take in nutrients via food consumption (C), some of which is egested (Eg) in undigested form as feces, some of which is excreted (Ex) as recycled nutrients in urine, and some of which is allocated to biomass production (P) for growth and reproduction. Mass balance dictates that Ex=C−Eg−P for overall rates of nutrient gain and loss (5). Allgeier et al. (4) show that, after statistically controlling for differences among taxa using mixed effects models (13), the dependencies of nitrogen and phosphorus recycling rates on body mass, M, are both well approximated by 3/4-power body mass scaling relations (i.e., ∝M3/4), implying that a species that is 2.5 times larger in adult mass recycles nitrogen and phosphorus at approximately double the rate (i.e., 2.53/4 ≈ 2), as illustrated above.
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