SCIENCE@home

A general scaling law reveals why the largest animals are not the fastest

Myriam R. Hirt,W. Jetz,Björn C. Rall,U. Brose

Published 2017 in Nature Ecology & Evolution

ABSTRACT

Speed is the fundamental constraint on animal movement, yet there is no general consensus on the determinants of maximum speed itself. Here, we provide a general scaling model of maximum speed with body mass, which holds across locomotion modes, ecosystem types and taxonomic groups. In contrast to traditional power-law scaling, we predict a hump-shaped relationship resulting from a finite acceleration time for animals, which explains why the largest animals are not the fastest. This model is strongly supported by extensive empirical data (474 species, with body masses ranging from 30 μg to 100 tonnes) from terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. Our approach unravels a fundamental constraint on the upper limit of animal movement, thus enabling a better understanding of realized movement patterns in nature and their multifold ecological consequences. Maximum speed could scale with body mass, but the largest animals are not actually the fastest. A general scaling law explains this with a hump-shaped relationship due to a finite limit on acceleration time.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-44 of 44 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-100 of 156 citing papers · Page 1 of 2

12
Next