Data from: Mammalian metabolic allometry: do intraspecific variation, phylogeny, and regression models matter?

Power scaling relationships between body mass and organismal traits are fundamental to biology. Compilations of mammalian masses and basal metabolic rates date back over a century and are used both to support and to assail the universal quarter‐power scaling invoked by the metabolic theory of ecology. However, the slope of this interspecific allometry is typically estimated without accounting for intraspecific variation in body mass or phylogenetic constraints on metabolism. We returned to the original literature and culled nearly all unique measurements of body mass and basal metabolism for 695 mammal species and (1) phylogenetically corrected the data using the fullest available phylogeny, (2) applied several different regression analyses, (3) resampled regressions by drawing randomly selected species from each of the polytomies in the phylogenetic hypothesis at each iteration, and (4) ran these same analyses independently on separate clades. Overall, 95% confidence intervals of slope estimates frequently did not include 0.75, and clade‐specific slopes varied from 0.5 to 0.85, depending on the clade and regression model. Our approach reveals that the choice of analytical model has a systematic influence on the estimated allometry, but irrespective of the model applied, we find little support for a universal metabolic rate–body mass scaling relationship.体重与生物体性状之间的幂律缩放关系是生物学领域的基础性研究命题。哺乳动物体重与基础代谢率（basal metabolic rate）的汇编数据集可追溯至一个多世纪以前，相关数据既被用于支撑也被用于驳斥生态学代谢理论所提出的普适性四分之一幂缩放法则。然而，此类种间异速生长（interspecific allometry）的斜率估计通常未考虑体重的种内变异以及代谢过程的系统发育约束（phylogenetic constraints）。我们回溯原始文献，筛选得到695个哺乳动物物种的体重与基础代谢率的几乎全部独有测量数据，并开展了四项工作：（1）采用当前最完整的系统发育（phylogeny）数据集对数据进行系统发育校正；（2）应用多种不同的回归分析方法；（3）在每次迭代中，从系统发育假说的各个多歧类群（polytomy）中随机选取物种，对回归分析进行重采样；（4）针对不同演化支（clade）独立开展上述相同分析。总体而言，斜率估计值的95%置信区间（confidence interval）通常不包含0.75，且不同演化支的专属斜率介于0.5至0.85之间，具体数值取决于演化支类型与回归模型。本研究方法表明，分析模型的选择对估算得到的异速生长关系存在系统性影响，但无论采用何种模型，我们均未发现足够证据支持普适性的代谢率-体重幂律缩放关系。