What to expect in this book?

This book is about a formal consistent and coherent theory for the processes of substrate uptake and use by organisms, which I called the Dynamic Energy Budget (deb) theory. Over the 30 years of research on this theory, it became well established; some 140 papers on deb theory have appeared since the second edition in 2000. The application of the theory by the international research group AQU Adeb, http://www.ifremer.fr/aquadeb/, and of this book in the DEB tele-courses, http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/deb/course/, urged for a new edition. This book gives a fresh update of the present state of the theory. In view of its accelerating development, this update will probably not be the last one. To accommodate all new material, I had to cut out most methodological parts of the previous edition, which is a pity because opponents of deb theory typically seem to differ in opinion on ‘details’, but actually differ in opinion on the role of models in research and related methodological issues. I wrote a document on methods in theoretical biology, which also summarises the mathematics that is used in this book, see http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/deb/.

Many empirical models, ranging from Lavoisier's model for indirect calorimetry, Kleiber's model for the respiration as function of body weight, von Bertalanffy's model for animal growth and Droop's model for nutrient-limited algal growth, turned out to be special cases of deb models that follow from the theory.