Abstract

SANCHEZ GARDUNO, Faustino  and  GUTIERREZ SANCHEZ, José Luis. Allometry, an ubiquitous power law in the structure of living beings. Inter disciplina [online]. 2020, vol.8, n.20, pp.11-22.  Epub Aug 14, 2020. ISSN 2448-5705.  https://doi.org/10.22201/ceiich.24485705e.2020.20.71181.

Since they exhibe a strong correlation, allometry is the study of the variation of the anatomical and physiological dimensions in all the living beings; this allows us to approach the study of the organisms as a whole, not just as the simple sum of their parts. By assuming the dynamical allometry principle, in this paper we present a controversy dealing with the relationship between the metabolic rate and the mass of the organisms (between the respective Rubner and Kleiber laws). In here, we develop a series of novel arguments to solve it in terms of the structure of selfsimilar transportation and material exchange networks. This allows us to reflect on how the allometric framework provide an argument favouring the biological evolution by means of multiple changes in the whole organisms architecture, not just as the accumulation of slight changes in this or in that organ.

Keywords : scaling; power laws; selfsimilar networks; metabolic rate; anabolism; catabolism; evolution.

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