A growing size synthesis

The size of an organism is critical to understanding its biology. A telling example comes from the use of sound to localize a potential predatory or prey: this can be based on interaural time difference, but only if the distance between the ears, and hence the size of the head, is large enough. Or consider vision: the diffraction limit constrains the size of image-forming eyes to a certain minimum. The importance of size as a holistic feature of organisms, with consequences for our understanding at every length scale, was taken firmly on board in the early 20th century.