Abstract
Energy budgets provide information on energy allocation and physiological responses of consumers to optimize their energy gain. This optimization can be achieved by adjusting rates of food ingestion, assimilation, respiration or growth. This chapter describes a method to calculate energy budgets of shredders feeding on leaf litter. The approach involves determining food ingestion, excretion, respiration and growth under laboratory conditions. Food ingestion is obtained from changes in litter mass exposed to individual shredders for a known time. Faecal production is determined by collecting faeces and determining their dry mass. Growth is obtained from changes in shredders biomass during an extended period, typically a few weeks. These primary data are used to assess assimilation efficiency (difference between ingestion and excretion divided by ingestion) and growth efficiency (growth divided by ingestion). The difference between food intake and metabolic output is referred to as scope for growth (SfG), which is an indicator of energy available for growth and reproduction. Stressful conditions affect the energy balance of consumers by increasing metabolic costs associated with maintaining homeostasis. Laboratory experiments using this approach have revealed that food ingestion, assimilation, growth and SfG are affected by temperature, litter quality and pollutants.
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Graça, M.A.S. (2020). Energy Budget of Shredders. In: Bärlocher, F., Gessner, M., Graça, M. (eds) Methods to Study Litter Decomposition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30515-4_53
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30515-4_53
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