Predicting the effects of body size, temperature and diet on animal feeding rates

Abstract

The amount of energy and nutrients consumed by individuals in order to grow, maintain bodily functions and reproduce constitutes an important ecological function in natural ecosystems. Consumption rates thus constitute a centrepiece in the pursuit to link individual function to ecological processes at higher levels of organisation.In food webs, consumption rates of organisms can control myriads of ecological processes, from net primary production (e.g. via biomass removal of primary producers and selected grazing by