  Our aim is to provide an overview of half-saturation constants reported in
literature and to explore their consistency with body size. In many ecological
models, intake of nutrients by plants and consumption of food by animals is
considered to be a hyperbolic function of the nutrient concentration and the
food density, respectively. However, data on the concentration (or density) at
which half of the maximum intake rate is reached are scarce, limiting the
applicability of the computational models. The meta-analysis was conducted on
literature published worldwide. Most studies focused on algae and
invertebrates, whereas some included fish, birds and mammals. The
half-saturation constants obtained were linked to body size using ordinary
regression analysis. The observed trends were compared to those noted in
reviews on other density parameters. Half-saturation constants for different
clades range within one or two orders of magnitude. Although these constants
are inherently variable, exploring allometric relationships across different
taxa helps to improve consistent parameterization of ecological models.
