Secrets of Kleiber’s and Maximum Metabolic Rate Allometries Revealed with a Link to Oxygen-Deficient -Combustion -Engineering

The biology literature addresses two puzzles: i) the increase in specific metabolic rate of organs (SOrMR, W/kg of organ) with a decrease in body mass (MB) of biological species (BS), and ii) how the organs recognize they are in a smaller or larger body and adjust metabolic rates of the body ( ) accordingly. These puzzles were answered in the author’s earlier work by linking the field of oxygen-deficient combustion (ODC) of fuel-particle clouds (FC) in engineering to the field of oxygen-deficient metabolism (ODM) of cell clouds (CC) in biology. The current work extends the ODM hypothesis to predict the whole body metabolic rates of 114 BS and demonstrates Kleiber’s power law { }. The methodology involves the i) extension of the effectiveness factor relation, expressed in terms of the dimensionless group number G (= Thiele Modulus2), from engineering to the organs of BS, ii) modification of G as GOD for the biology literature as a measure of oxygen deficiency (OD), iii) collection of data on organ and body masses of 116 species and prediction of SOrMRk of organ k of 114 BS using only the SorMRk of two reference species (Shrew, 0.0076 kg: RS-1; Rat, 0.380 kg: RS-2), iv) estimation of of 114 species versus MB and demonstration of Kleiber’s law with a = 2.962, b = 0.747, and v) extension of ODM to predict the allometric law for maximal metabolic rate (MMR under exercise, { }.) and validate the approach for MMR by comparing bMMR with the literature data.