The Lifetime Cardiac-Cycle Invariant in Endothermic Vertebrates : A 230-Species Comparative Dataset, Statistical Validation, and Explicit Falsifiability Criteria
- 1West Los Angeles College , Science Division 9000 Overland Ave , Culver City , CA 90230 , USA
Abstract
A pygmy shrew (Suncus etruscus, ≈2 g) sustains a resting heart rate near 1,000 beats min -1 and dies within two years; an African elephant (≈4,000 kg) beats at 28 beats min -1 and lives seven decades.Their chronological lifespans differ by a factor of 35, yet each accumulates close to 10 9 cardiac cycles before death-a near-constancy first noted by Rubner (1908) and quantified by Lindstedt and Calder (1981) [2], but never subjected to multi-clade statistical testing, phylogenetic correction, or explicit falsifiability criteria with a large modern dataset.We address this gap with a curated 230-species vertebrate dataset spanning non-primate placentals (n = 43), primates (n = 18), marsupials and monotremes (n = 19), duty-cycle-corrected bats (n = 31), dive-corrected cetaceans (n = 12), birds (n = 78), and Arrhenius-corrected ectotherms (n = 26), and subject the log-invariant ℓ = log 10 (N ⋆ )-where N ⋆ = fH L × 525,960 cardiac cycles-to four independent tests.OLS regression on non-primate placentals yields slope β ˆ = -0.903± 0.056 (R 2 = 0.863; BCa bootstrap 95 % CI [-1.017, -0.782]; p = 0.093 against H 0 : β = -1), consistent with exact inverse scaling.Phylogenetically independent contrasts on 112 endotherms tighten this to β ˆ = -0.99 ± 0.04 (R 2 = 0.94; p = 0.84), confirming the relation is not a phylogenetic artefact.One-way ANOVA across six endotherm clades yields F = 81.2(p < 0.001), decisively rejecting the West-Brown-Enquist kinematic null, which predicts zero inter-clade dispersion in ℓ.Arrhenius temperature correction (Ea = 0.65 eV) reduces the raw ectotherm-endotherm gap from 0.90 dex to 0.22 dex, bringing cold-blooded vertebrates into close alignment with the mammalian baseline.The non-primate placental baseline is ℓ ¯ = 8.994 ± 0.159 dex (N ⋆ ≈ 9.87 × 10 8 ), with significant structured clade offsets: +0.382 dex for primates (×2.41), +0.534 dex for birds (×3.42), +0.547 dex for duty-corrected bats (×3.52), and -0.192 dex for dive-corrected cetaceans (×0.64).Taken together, the data support a revised picture in which the lifetime heartbeat count is not a universal constant but a clade-structured invariant anchored to a common mammalian baseline and subject to quantifiable ecological and physiological departures; five explicit numerical falsification criteria with pre-registered thresholds are stated, and the full 230-species dataset is provided as Supplementary Data 1.
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BibTeX
@article{taye2026lifetime,
title = {{The Lifetime Cardiac-Cycle Invariant in Endothermic Vertebrates : A 230-Species Comparative Dataset, Statistical Validation, and Explicit Falsifiability Criteria}},
author = {Mesfin Asfaw Taye},
journal = {International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications},
year = {2026},
month = may,
doi = {10.29322/ijsrp.16.05.2026.p17306},
url = {https://doi.org/10.29322/ijsrp.16.05.2026.p17306},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The Lifetime Cardiac-Cycle Invariant in Endothermic Vertebrates : A 230-Species Comparative Dataset, Statistical Validation, and Explicit Falsifiability Criteria
AU - Mesfin Asfaw Taye
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/24
JO - International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications
DO - 10.29322/ijsrp.16.05.2026.p17306
UR - https://doi.org/10.29322/ijsrp.16.05.2026.p17306
AB - A pygmy shrew (Suncus etruscus, ≈2 g) sustains a resting heart rate near 1,000 beats min -1 and dies within two years; an African elephant (≈4,000 kg) beats at 28 beats min -1 and lives seven decades.Their chronological lifespans differ by a factor of 35, yet each accumulates close to 10 9 cardiac cycles before death-a near-constancy first noted by Rubner (1908) and quantified by Lindstedt and Calder (1981) [2], but never subjected to multi-clade statistical testing, phylogenetic correction, or explicit falsifiability criteria with a large modern dataset.We address this gap with a curated 230-species vertebrate dataset spanning non-primate placentals (n = 43), primates (n = 18), marsupials and monotremes (n = 19), duty-cycle-corrected bats (n = 31), dive-corrected cetaceans (n = 12), birds (n = 78), and Arrhenius-corrected ectotherms (n = 26), and subject the log-invariant ℓ = log 10 (N ⋆ )-where N ⋆ = fH L × 525,960 cardiac cycles-to four independent tests.OLS regression on non-primate placentals yields slope β ˆ = -0.903± 0.056 (R 2 = 0.863; BCa bootstrap 95 % CI [-1.017, -0.782]; p = 0.093 against H 0 : β = -1), consistent with exact inverse scaling.Phylogenetically independent contrasts on 112 endotherms tighten this to β ˆ = -0.99 ± 0.04 (R 2 = 0.94; p = 0.84), confirming the relation is not a phylogenetic artefact.One-way ANOVA across six endotherm clades yields F = 81.2(p < 0.001), decisively rejecting the West-Brown-Enquist kinematic null, which predicts zero inter-clade dispersion in ℓ.Arrhenius temperature correction (Ea = 0.65 eV) reduces the raw ectotherm-endotherm gap from 0.90 dex to 0.22 dex, bringing cold-blooded vertebrates into close alignment with the mammalian baseline.The non-primate placental baseline is ℓ ¯ = 8.994 ± 0.159 dex (N ⋆ ≈ 9.87 × 10 8 ), with significant structured clade offsets: +0.382 dex for primates (×2.41), +0.534 dex for birds (×3.42), +0.547 dex for duty-corrected bats (×3.52), and -0.192 dex for dive-corrected cetaceans (×0.64).Taken together, the data support a revised picture in which the lifetime heartbeat count is not a universal constant but a clade-structured invariant anchored to a common mammalian baseline and subject to quantifiable ecological and physiological departures; five explicit numerical falsification criteria with pre-registered thresholds are stated, and the full 230-species dataset is provided as Supplementary Data 1.
SN - 2250-3153
ER -