The metabolic origins of big size in aquatic mammals

TL;DR

This paper proposes that fat accumulation in aquatic mammals leads to metabolic changes that enable their exceptional size, supported by empirical data and a mathematical model analyzing ontogenetic trajectories across species.

Contribution

It introduces a novel explanation linking adipose tissue proportion to large size in aquatic mammals through metabolic and ontogenetic analysis.

Findings

Marine mammals have minimized catabolism and scaling exponents.

High adipose tissue proportion reduces cellular metabolic rate.

This metabolic reduction contributes to larger asymptotic size.

Abstract

The group of large aquatic mammals has representatives being the largest living beings on earth, surpassing the weight and size of dinosaurs. In this paper, we present some empirical evidence and a mathematical model to argue that fat accumulation in marine mammals triggers a series of metabolic events that result in these animals' increased size. Our study starts by analysing 43 ontogenetic trajectories of species of different types and sizes. For instance, the analyses include organisms with asymptotic mass from 27g (Taiwan field mouse) to $2.10^{7}$g (grey whale). The available data allows us to determine all available species' ontogenetic parameters (catabolism and anabolism constant, scaling exponent and asymptotic mass). The analyses of those data show a minimisation of catabolism and scaling exponent in marine mammals compared to other species analysed. We present a possible explanation for this, arguing that the large proportion of adipose tissue in these animals can cause this minimisation. That is because adipocytes have different scaling properties in comparison to non-adipose (typical) cells, expressed in reduced energetic demand and lower metabolism. The conclusion is that when we have an animal with a relatively large amount of adipose tissue, as is the case of aquatic mammals, the cellular metabolic rate decreases compared to other animals with the same mass but with proportionally smaller fat tissue. A final consequence of this cause-effect process is the increase of the asymptotic mass of these mammals.