Calculating fish metabolic rates
Metabolic rate is the rate at which energy and matter are taken up,
transformed and allocated to biomass (Brown et al. 2004). We calculated
species metabolic rates using body masses and temperature specific to
each site and sampling period. Temperature was measured below the water
surface (using a thermometer) during fish sampling period. Per gram
metabolic rate X was calculated using the following equation:
\(\ln X=ln\ i_{o}+a\times\ln M+\frac{E}{\text{kT}}\),
Where a = 18.8 is the allometric exponent, M is the body
mass in g, E = -0.69 is the activation energy, k is the
Boltzmann’s constant in eV.K-1, T is the
temperature in Kelvin, and io is a normalization
factor (Ehnes et al. 2011). Metabolic rates were calculated as joules
hour–1 and then converted by joules
year–1.