ARTICLE 66 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE February 2024 “The influence of feeding level on energy distribution in fishes is an important aspect of fish physiology and aquaculture management. When it comes to energy distribution, it typically involves how the energy obtained from the food they consume is allocated to various physiological processes and growth. Feeding level, or the amount of food consumed, can have a significant impact on how this energy is distributed within a fish's body.” Energy is the ability to do work. It comes from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and is quantitatively expressed in terms of kilocalories (kcal) or kilojoules (kJ). Energy is vital to fishes for all its physiological and metabolic needs to get fulfilled and fishes allocate energy to all the different processes taking into concern their total energy reserve so as to fulfil all their basic needs. Fishes at all stages of life have limited energy budgets (Glazier 1999; Kozlowski and Teriokhin 1999) and therefore they allocate resources among competing demands such as maintenance, growth, reproduction, and storage (Perrin 1992; Reznick and Yang 1993; McManus and Travis 1998). When energetic demands shift, a trade-off will come into place, wherein a part may get diverted to reproduction. In case of younger fishes, they balance energy demands between growth and storage to overcome two major sources of mortality during their initial years which are predation and starvation. A strategy used by them in this concern is to allocate their initial energy to growth and then divert that allocation, at least in part, to storage in anticipation of seasonal resource shortages (Post and Parkinson 2001). This strategy allows them to attain a necessary size above that at which they are most vulnerable to predators while building storage reserves for future periods when food may get scarce. Achieving a larger size has even more advantage as per mass metabolic demand decreases with increasing size (Shuter and Post 1990; Schultz and Conover 1999). Competing demands of growth and storage are therefore strongest for the smallest, youngest fish (Post and Parkinson 2001). Most of the evidence for fast growth followed by increased storage comes from species at high (cold, temperate) latitudes where productivity varies greatly in accordance with seasons. Far less is known about energy allocation of juvenile fishes at lower (warm-temperate) latitudes, where growing seasons are longer, periods of low winter resources are shorter, and temporal patterns of productivity are less variable. Thus, it is said that feed and feeding level estimate the distribution pattern ultimately and it decides INFLUENCE OF FEEDING LEVEL ON ENERGY DISTRIBUTION Megha S Vinod Department of Fish Nutrition and Feed Technology Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai
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