Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

Here: (23) The exponential scaling of embryonic development times with temperature for eggs of birds and aquatic ectotherms (measured in centigrade), rescaled according to the ¼ power scaling law to remove their mass dependence (see text). These “mass adjusted” times are plotted logarithmically on the vertical axis against the temperature plotted linearly on the horizontal one. On such a semilogarithmic plot exponentials appear as straight lines, as observed. (24) Similar “mass adjusted” plot showing the exponential dependence of life spans of various invertebrates on temperature. Notice that for technical reasons explained in the text the data are plotted versus inverse absolute temperature (milli degrees Kelvin) so that temperature actually decreases as one moves to the right.