I’m interested in understanding how the properties of living systems scale with their size and the size of their environments, and the implications of these scaling relations and associated metabolic constraints for patterns of size, abundance, diversity and evolution. My work has developed theory, frameworks, and analyses linking geometric and metabolic constraints to patterns of size, abundance, and diversity across biological and human systems: from cellular organization (surface-area scaling, mitochondrial number and power) and major evolutionary transitions that alter metabolic scaling and efficiency, to organismal body-size distributions and the scaling of species richness and community abundance with energy availability (the Equilibrium Theory of Biodiversity Dynamics), and finally to analogous scaling in human cities (revisiting urban density and scaling laws). Together this work shows how constraints on energy use, internalization versus surface exchange, and niche/size packing propagate through levels of organization to shape production, diversity, and spatial density, providing theory and generalizable models that explain and predict scaling regularities and their departures across complex systems.
Okie, J.G. and D. Storch. 2025. The Equilibrium Theory of Biodiversity Dynamics: A General Framework for Scaling Species Richness and Community Abundance along Environmental Gradients. American Naturalist 205(1). DOI: 10.1086/733103.
Fahimi, P., C.F. Matta, and J.G. Okie. Are size and mitochondrial power of cells inter-determined? Journal of Theoretical Biology 572:111565. DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2023.111565
Burger, J.R., Okie, J.G., Hatton, I.A., Weinberger, V.P., Shrestha, M., Liedtke, K.J., Be, T., Cruz, A.R., Feng, X., Hinojo-Hinojo, C., 2022. Global city densities: re-examining urban scaling theory. Frontiers in Conservation Science 3: 125.
Okie, J.G., V.H. Smith, and M. Martin-Cereceda. 2016. Major evolutionary transitions of life, metabolic scaling, and the number and size of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Proc. Roc. Soc. B 283:20160611. (Supplemental Material).
Okie, J.G. 2013. General models for the spectra of surface area scaling strategies of cells and organisms: fractality, geometric dissimilitude, and internalization. American Naturalist 181:421-439.
DeLong, J.P., J.G. Okie, M.E. Moses, R.M. Sibly, and J.H. Brown. 2010. Shifts in metabolic scaling, production, and efficiency across major evolutionary transitions of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:12941-12945.
Okie, J.G., and J.H. Brown. 2009. Niches, body sizes, and the disassembly of mammal communities on the Sunda Shelf islands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:19679-19684