The difficulty with correlations: Energy expenditure and brain mass in bats

Brain mass has been suggested to determine a mammal's energy expenditure. This potential dependence is examined in 48 species of bats. A correlation between characters may be direct or derived from shared correlations with intervening factors without a direct interaction. Basal rate of metaboli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative biochemistry and physiology. Part A, Molecular & integrative physiology Molecular & integrative physiology, 2017-10, Vol.212, p.9-14
Main Authors: McNab, Brian K., Köhler, Meike
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bats
Brain
Food habits
Metabolism
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Summary:Brain mass has been suggested to determine a mammal's energy expenditure. This potential dependence is examined in 48 species of bats. A correlation between characters may be direct or derived from shared correlations with intervening factors without a direct interaction. Basal rate of metabolism in these bats increases with brain mass: large brains are more expensive than small brains, and both brain mass and basal rate increase with body mass. Basal rate and brain mass also correlate with food habits in bats. Mass-independent basal rate weakly correlates with mass-independent brain mass, the correlation only accounting for 12% of the variation in basal rate, which disappears when the combined effects of body mass and food habits are deleted. The correlation between basal rate and brain mass seen in this and other studies usually accounts for
ISSN:1095-6433
1531-4332
DOI:10.1016/j.cbpa.2017.06.017