Macroevolutionary patterns in body size, reproduction, and energy use

Body size is important, yet how size covaries with some fundamental aspects of reproduction remains unclear. Here, I formally test the relationship between body size and key reproductive traits, as well as how reproductive traits might modify the well-known relationship between body size and energy use. This thesis confirms some suspected relationships between body size, reproduction, and physiology, but it also highlights new areas for exploration – namely, we cannot explain the coevolutionary patterns in body size, metabolism and offspring size.