The Causes and Consequences of Variation in Metabolic Rate in a Sessile Marine Invertebrate

Metabolic rate determines the rate at which individuals transform resources from the environment into energy and use this energy to live. Within a population, metabolic rate varies among individuals, even after accounting for differences in body size, temperature, age, and sex. Although we are starting to understand the drivers and the maintenance of this variation in metabolic rate over time, its consequences for both individual- and population-level processes remain largely unclear. My work presents novel insights into how metabolic rate can affect individual performance and how such processes can scale up to affect population-level dynamics in the field.