Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2021 Nov;191(6):1097-1110.
doi: 10.1007/s00360-021-01358-w. Epub 2021 Mar 15.

Meta-analysis reveals that resting metabolic rate is not consistently related to fitness and performance in animals

Pieter A Arnold  1   2 , Steven Delean  3 , Phillip Cassey  3 , Craig R White  4   5
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis reveals that resting metabolic rate is not consistently related to fitness and performance in animals

Pieter A Arnold et al. J Comp Physiol B. 2021 Nov.

Abstract

Explaining variation in the fitness of organisms is a fundamental goal in evolutionary ecology. Maintenance energy metabolism is the minimum energy required to sustain biological processes at rest (resting metabolic rate: RMR) and is proposed to drive or constrain fitness of animals; however, this remains debated. Hypotheses have been proposed as to why fitness might increase with RMR (the 'increased intake' or 'performance' hypothesis), decrease with RMR (the 'compensation' or 'allocation' hypothesis), or vary among species and environmental contexts (the 'context dependent' hypothesis). Here, we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature, finding 114 studies with 355 relationships between RMR and traits that may be related to fitness. We show that individuals with relatively high RMR generally have high fitness overall, which might be supported by an increased energy intake. However, fitness proxies are not interchangeable: the nature of the RMR-fitness relationship varied substantially depending on the specific trait in question, and we found no consistent relationship between RMR and those traits most closely linked with actual fitness (i.e., lifetime reproductive success). We hypothesise that maintaining high RMR is not costly when resources are unlimited, and we propose ideas for future studies to identify mechanisms underlying RMR-fitness relationships.

Keywords: Ectotherm; Endotherm; Evolutionary physiology; RMR; Reproduction; Survival.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Ameri M, Kemp DJ, Barry KL, Herberstein ME (2020) Is resting metabolic rate related to reproductive output in an orb-web spider, Argiope radon? Ecol Entomol 45(5):1044–1052. https://doi.org/10.1111/een.12882 - DOI
    1. Arnold PA, Cassey P, White CR (2017) Functional traits in red flour beetles: the dispersal phenotype is associated with leg length but not body size nor metabolic rate. Funct Ecol 31(3):653–661. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12772 - DOI
    1. Artacho P, Nespolo RF (2009) Natural selection reduces energy metabolism in the garden snail, Helix aspersa (Cornu aspersum). Evolution 63(4):1044–1050. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2008.00603.x - DOI
    1. Auer SK, Bassar RD, Salin K, Metcalfe NB (2016) Repeatability of metabolic rate is lower for animals living under field versus laboratory conditions. J Exp Biol 219(5):631–634. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.133678 - DOI
    1. Auer SK, Killen SS, Rezende EL (2017) Resting vs. active: a meta-analysis of the intra- and inter-specific associations between minimum, sustained, and maximum metabolic rates in vertebrates. Funct Ecol 31(9):1728–1738. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12879 - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources