Variable intake, compensatory growth, and increased growth efficiency in fish: Models and mechanisms

Resources fluctuate in space and time, and animals routinely experience temporally varying opportunities for resource intake, and variation in intake itself. We investigate consequences of such variation in intake on growth and growth efficiency (growth per unit intake) in juvenile hybrid striped bass. We observed, after statistically accounting for the effects of total consumption and initial body size, that individuals receiving a low ration followed by a higher ration (the fluctuating ration) grew faster than individuals receiving a temporally constant ration (the normal ration). To interpret this increase in growth efficiency, we consider a set of alternative models representing different physiological hypotheses of the growth process. Using a simple growth model, an analytical result shows that the fluctuating ration as typically applied in experiments (a low ration followed by a high ration), independent of any change in physiology, increases growth efficiency relative to individuals on the normal ration. Growth efficiency increases because cumulative maintenance costs are lower for individuals that stay small initially and then grow rapidly in comparison to individuals that grow steadily. Further, a statistical analysis of alternative models inferred that fish receiving a variable ration show higher assimilation and/or conversion efficiencies of food and lower mass-specific maintenance costs. Our analysis suggests that the lower cumulative maintenance costs incurred over a time interval with low consumption followed by high consumption act in association with higher assimilation-conversion efficiencies, and lower overall mass-specific maintenance costs to increase growth efficiency in hybrid striped bass.