Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to heterogeneity are complementary: Response to comments on “Evaluating the influences of temperature, primary production, and evolutionary history on bivalve growth rates”

The goal of our study was to evaluate the degree to which relationships between environmental factors and growth rate observed in populations and species can be generalized across the entire bivalve clade. Because growth bands are commonly preserved in fossil bivalves, they may provide insights into both the metabolic physiology of ancient species and the environments in which they lived. Aquarium studies of bivalves and the whole body of metabolic theory indicate that at some level temperature does limit growth rate, so it is surprising that broad-scale differences in thermal regime correspond only weakly to differences in the central tendency and dispersion of growth rate at the broadest scale.