{"Energy equivalence predicts that if whole–organism energy use scales with body mass with a ¾ exponent and the density of individuals scales with population body mass with a –¾ exponent, population energy use should, therefore, be independent of population body mass. We explored mass–abundance and mass–energy use scaling across global soil invertebrate food webs to investigate the universality of mass–abundance scaling relationships for indicating energy equivalence in soil ecosystems. Additionally, we compared two measures of energy use to investigate these relationships: metabolism and energy fluxes. We found that mass–abundance scaling was not an appropriate indicator of energy equivalence across soil communities. Further, we find that although the majority of studies use metabolism as an estimate of energy use to test for energy equivalence, it remains a far less precise estimate compared to energy flux. Evidence of energy equivalence and its adherence to predictions, was dependent on both the trophic level of the consumers (primary or secondary consumers) and food web properties (node richness and trophic similarity)."}
