A suitable nonlinear interaction between dark matter with an energy density $rho_{M}$ and dark energy with an energy density $rho_{X}$ is known to give rise to a non-canonical scaling $rho_{M} propto rho_{X}a^{-xi}$ where $xi$ is a parameter which generally deviates from $xi =3$. Here we present a covariant generalization of this class of models and investigate the corresponding perturbation dynamics. The resulting matter power spectrum for the special case of a time-varying Lambda model is compared with data from the SDSS DR9 catalogue. We find a best-fit value of $xi = 3.25$ which corresponds to a decay of dark matter into the cosmological term. Our results are compatible with the $Lambda$CDM model at the 2$sigma$ confidence level.
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