Book Errata

This is a list of errata discovered by alert readers (or even the author) of the book "Measuring metabolic rates: A manual for scientists", by John Lighton (first edition). It's a sad fact that no matter how careful the proof-reading may be, the proof-reader's brain fills in what it expects to see. For all their other interesting qualities, brains and their weird behind-the-scenes habits can be rather annoying. I can blame a couple of the errors on OUP's typesetters; for most, I can only blame my own proofreading. Damn.

  • Page 5. The latent heat of fusion of water is given as "0.334 kJ". The printer left out the "g-1" which was present in the final proof and which should have followed the kJ.
  • Page 18. In the electrochemical equation 3.1, the second "+" symbol should be a right-pointing arrow. Thanks to Rachel Carmody of Harvard University for pointing out this error.
  • Page 86. Equation 8.1 should read T = -(V / FR) * LN((100 - F) / 100). Thanks to respirometry course attendee Kathrin Bühler of Universität Zürich for pointing out this error.
  • Page 110. In equation 10.3, which calculates water vapor pressure based on the difference between dry and moisture-diluted oxygen concentrations, F'iO2 (dry fractional oxygen concentration) is subtracted from FiO2 (moist fractional oxygen concentration). The order of subtraction should be reversed. Thanks to Andreas Moelich (the distinguished head of Sable Systems Europe GmbH) for pointing out this error.
  • Page 116. The timescale of the X axis in Figure 10.8 should be hours, not minutes. Yikes.
  • Page 132. Equation 12.1, which calculates a pseudo-VO2 from a rate of nitrogen injection into a flow-through respirometry system, should read VO2 = FRA {FiO2/[1-FiO2+(FRA/FR)]}. Of course this can generally be expressed as VO2 = FRA*FiO2/[1-FiO2+(FRA/FR)]. Thanks to Michal Wojciechowski of Nicolas Copernicus University for pointing out a parenthesis-balancing error. God, I hate those.
  • Page 145. The text below Equation 13.1 (which converts ectothermic metabolic rates across temperatures) should read "Where MR2 is the metabolic rate standardized to temperature T2 (in C or K), Q10 is the Q10 (assume 2.0 if it is not known), MR1 is the measured metabolic rate and T1 is the temperature at which MR1 was measured." The original text mistakenly inverted T1 and T2. The equation is correct (see the calculator section for an instantiation). Thanks to James Waters of ASU for pointing out this error.

For the second edition of the book, I have strangely few errata - this was unexpected, but I'm not complaining. I do have a minor controversy to report, though. Justin Grobe, who I hold in high esteem, maintains that his mouse BMR value shown in Figure 15.4 is correct, whereas my text maintains that it is an underestimate. My BMR calculator for the genus Mus likewise suggests that it is an underestimate (see the "Calculators" section of this website). I am agnostic in this respect, and BMR is so investigator- and technique-dependent that I'm happy to acknowledge that Justin's reported BMR may well be within the range of feasibility.