Metabolic theory predicts animal self-thinning

1. The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) predicts observed patterns in ecology based on metabolic rates of individuals. The theory is influential but also criticized for a lack of firm empirical evidence confirming MTE’s quantitative predictions of processes, e.g. outcome of competition, at population or community level. 2. Self-thinning is a well-known population level phenomenon among plants, but a much less studied phenomenon in animal populations and no consensus exists on what a universal thinning slope for animal populations might be, or if it exists. 3. The goal of this study was to use animal self-thinning as a tool to test population-level predictions from MTE, by analyzing (i) if self-thinning can be induced in populations of house crickets (Acheta domesticus) and (ii) if the resulting thinning trajectories can be predicted from metabolic theory, using estimates of the species-specific metabolic rate of A. domesticus 4. I performed a laboratory study where the growth of A. dom...