Nutritional status determines apparent assimilative capacity and functional response of marine predatory fish

Abstract Marine predatory fish face unpredictable prey environments, ranging from abundance to scarcity of food. Dimensioning their assimilative system accommodate gorging and fasting is therefore a central life history choice. Assimilative capacity experiments typically operate with sustained feeding satiation, ignore the fluctuations in natural opportunities. A more relevant description adaptive response episodic associated binge (hyperphagia). We develop theoretical foundation define its allometry. Extensive empirical evidence on marine piscivorous at higher latitudes confirms that scales almost linearly predator body mass (exponent approximately 0.95), producing an increasing factorial hyperphagic scope 0.20). Our synthesis overturns reigning steady state perspective capacity. The can utilize capacity, twice size resulting local dynamics functional responses profound implications for scaling-up ecosystem level.