Dr. Sewall has published a new article clarifying how body size influences energy use in ecological communities. The article, published in the journal PLOS One, provides a field test of community ecology theory relating animal body size with energy use through consumption. The research provided the first test of size-energy theories to directly quantify energy intake among a foraging guild. Results supported the energetic equivalence hypothesis, which suggests that energy use from shared, limiting resources by populations or size classes of foragers are independent of body size. The research provides key insights into mechanisms underlying local size-energy relationships, and has important implications for predicting species interactions and for understanding the structure and dynamics of ecological communities. The research was conducted in collaboration with Amy Freestone (of Temple University), Joseph Hawes (University of East Anglia, UK), and Ernest Andriamanarina (Universite d’Antsiranana, Madagascar).
The article is available freely via Open Access at: