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But, especially in mammals, it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. A cheetah and an elephant are unique individuated specimens; it doesn’t ma
by club_tropical 4y ago
But, especially in mammals, it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. A cheetah and an elephant are unique individuated specimens; it doesn’t make sense to compare their mass. In ants/bees it’s maybe something like “number of colonies/hives” that is the meaningful unit. Why would anyone compare across species by mass- that is a reductive number, you can’t infer anything meaningful out of it. Also, certainly not by percentage - have to look at absolute numbers of meaningful units over time.
- pvaldes 4y ago> it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. Not. This is a very common mistake among people that does not understand ecology.
- club_tropical 4y agoYou can call me a heretic for questioning His Majesty The Ecologist, but the emperor wears no clothes and percentage of aggregate biomass is the most meaningless metric I've ever heard to study mammals.
- pvaldes 4y agoYour opinion about monarchs and underpants has been carefully registered by our royal lackey penguins