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Question:
I have a question on ERICA. When you create an organism you can give a mass and you can give dimensions. Nothing prevents me for, say, creating an organism which is a sphere of radius 1 cm, but of different mass: 1 kg, 100 kg... this seems to contradict a bit the assumption of unit density for organisms.

Answer:
When you use the create organism function it the Tool uses the mass entered, the ratios of the dimensions and assumes a density of 1 g/cm to estimate the organism size. So if you enter 1 kg as mass you would actually get the same result regardless of the dimensions you enter as long as the ratio of the dimensions is the same (try creating a 1 kg organism of 1mx1mx1m and compare your resultant DCC values to those of a 1kg organism of 0.01mx0.01mx0.01 m).

See Ulanovsky et al. (2008) for a more complete explanation.

Answered by Nick Beresford & Justin Brown (NRPA) 13/12/2010

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