by Bhaskar L. V. K. S. (Author)
Bioenergetics is the study of balance between energy supply and energy expenditure and requires an examination of physiological processes through which energy is transformed in living organisms. Studies on the flow and allocation of energy in biological systems often have, as their ultimate goal, the construction of a budget describing the partitioning of energy within an individual or population. Such budgets are then used to make inference about physiology or ecology in particular explaining why an organism or population does what it is observed to do assuming that energy allocation is the overriding concern. Bioenergetic modelling is an alternative method for estimating feeding rates in a natural population. These models quantify the relationship between feeding rates and growth relative to temperature, body size and activity. Bioenergetic models have been applied to address ecological questions in a wide variety of taxa.