![]() ![]() During growth, some fraction of this energy is allocated to the production of new tissue. These resources are transformed into metabolic energy, which is used for life-sustaining activities. Incoming energy and materials from the environment are transported through hierarchical branching network systems to supply all cells. Ontogenetic development is fuelled by metabolism and occurs primarily by cell division. The model provides the basis for deriving allometric relationships for growth rates and the timing of life history events. We thus predict the parameters governing growth curves from basic cellular properties and derive a single parameterless universal curve that describes the growth of many diverse species. Here, we derive a general quantitative model based on fundamental principles for the allocation of metabolic energy between maintenance of existing tissue and the production of new biomass. Several equations have been proposed to describe ontogenetic growth trajectories for organisms justified primarily on the goodness of fit rather than on any biological mechanism. ![]()
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