Bioenergetics modeling of percid fishes

A bioenergetics model for a percid fish represents a quantitative description of the fish’s energy budget. Bioenergetics modeling can be used to identify the important factors determining growth of percids in lakes, rivers, or seas. For example, bioenergetics modeling applied to yellow perch (Perca flavescens) in the western and central basins of Lake Erie revealed that the slower growth in the western basin was attributable to limitations in suitably sized prey in western Lake Erie, rather than differences in water temperature between the two basins. Bioenergetics modeling can also be applied to a percid population to estimate the amount of food being annually consumed by the percid population. For example, bioenergetics modeling applied to the walleye (Sander vitreus) population in Lake Erie has provided fishery managers valuable insights into changes in the population’s predatory demand over time. In addition, bioenergetics modeling has been used to quantify the effect of the difference in growth between the sexes on contaminant accumulation in walleye. Field and laboratory evaluations of percid bioenergetics model performance have documented a systematic bias, such that the models overestimate consumption at low feeding rates but underestimate consumption at high feeding rates. However, more recent studies have shown that this systematic bias was due, at least in part, to an error in the energy budget balancing algorithm used in the computer software. Future research work is needed to more thoroughly assess the field and laboratory performance of percid bioenergetics models and to quantify differences in activity and standard metabolic rate between the sexes of mature percids.