Energy Budget
The accounting of energy intake, storage, and expenditure in an organism. All energy acquired must be allocated between survival, growth, and reproduction—you cannot spend 110% of what you have.
Used in the Books
This term appears in 8 chapters:
"...ide which patches are worth exploring? And most critically - how much energy can it afford to spend searching before it starves? That's Chapter 3: Energy Budgets and Metabolic Constraints - the physiology of resource allocation and the mathematics of survival. --- End of Chapter 2"
"Every organism faces this choice. Every company faces it too. The principle: Every organism has a fixed energy budget. You can't maximize survival AND reproduction AND growth simultaneously. You allocate. You trade off."
"...e: Energy expenditure: Moving 5,000 acorns from tree to ground, digging 5,000 holes, covering them. Calories burned: estimated 15-20% of daily energy budget during peak caching season (September-November). Memory burden**: The squirrel must remember where it buried acorns."
"Every 2-3 weeks, it reheats to 98°F (37°C) for 12-24 hours, burning precious fat reserves. The rewarming costs 86% of its winter energy budget. The actual hibernation (cold state) costs only 14%. The paradox: The squirrel saves energy by cooling down, but spends most energy warming up."
"The rural fox defends 106 million square feet - 353× more boundary to patrol, mark, and defend. Same species, same energy budget, wildly different defensive costs. The equation that determines survival: Territory size × Boundary length × Intrusion frequency = Total defensi..."
And 3 more chapters...
Biological Context
Life history theory formalizes energy budgets: Total Energy = Survival + Growth + Reproduction. Pacific salmon allocate 100% to reproduction and die (semelparity); Atlantic salmon balance across multiple spawning seasons (iteroparity). Oak trees in mast years allocate heavily to reproduction (up to 60kg of acorns), then recover for 2-7 years. The cost of reproduction hypothesis predicts that higher investment in current reproduction reduces future survival and fecundity. The constraint is absolute—organisms cannot spend more than they acquire without depleting reserves and dying.