Feed Conversion Efficiency

To estimate an organisms total growth efficiency you need to know the complete feed ingestion from birth till death, the complete cellular metabolism and the total amount of feces released.

The energy used to stay alive without any growth is called energy used for maintenance.

An approximation can be made using respiration and calculations of metabolism

The growth efficiency is equal to, open brackets, the food intake, minus, the feces, minus, the metabolism, close bracket, divided by, the food intake.

Where G_E is Growth Efficiency

F_I is Food Intake

F_O is Feces

M_E is Metabolism

Units used for calculating the growth efficiency of an organism are joules, which is the SI-unit of energy.

Metabolism can be estimated via the respiration of an organism

Referred from:

Article

Food webs