The core of the event is the meeting of key people of the Add-my-Pet (AmP) project: online collaborative collection of data, DEB models and parameters, which is following the FAIR principles of open science, linked to 15 years of the AmP project. A series of activities are planned, through which the AmP project and DEB theory will be presented to the Croatian scientific community.

During the first week of February (03. - 07.02.2025) RBI will host top researchers in the field of applied ecological modeling, i.e. metabolic theory -- Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory -- and DEB based mechanistic models. Visiting the Institute will be: SALM (Bas) Kooijman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Konstadia (Dina) Lika (University of Crete), Mike Kearney (University of Melbourne), Romain Lavaud (Louisiana State University), Gonçalo Marques (Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade of Lisboa), Starrlight Augustine (Institute of Ecotechnics), Tan Tjui-Yeuw (Wageningen University).

As part of the gathering, one day will be of the 'open' type, which will be opened by a lecture by dr. Kearney: "Modelling and Mapping the Ecological Niche",  followed by a mini-workshop  where the registered participants will interact with the DEB experts, will learn the basics of DEB theory and AmP project, and how to best use their data to obtain informed predictions and conclusions. Short lectures will be held by dr. Gonçalo Marques, dr. Romain Lavaud, prof. dr. SALM Kooijman, and Tan Tjui Jeuw.

AmP  project is based on DEB theory for metabolic organization, and is an open access, online, collection of data on energetics and DEB parameters for animals (currently over 5000 species). It aims to collect:

• referenced data on the energetics of animal species, such that the parameters of the standard Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model, and those of its different variants, can be estimated
• Matlab code for estimating DEB parameters from this data
• DEB parameter estimates for a large number of animal species
• properties of species that are implied by these parameters

​

DEB theory of metabolic organisation aims to explain and formalize the rules of energy and matter acquisition and allocation, for all living organisms. It resulted from over 30 years of scientific research by a group of scientists gathered around prof. SALM Kooijman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and it is continually build-on and refined, thanks to the scientists such as  prof. dr. Mike Kearney (University of Melbourne), prof. dr. Konstadia Lika (University of Crete), Assoc. prof. Gonçalo Marques (Istituto Superior Tecnico, Lisabon), assoc.prof. Romain Lavaud (University of Louisiana), and dr. Starrlight Augustine – all of whom will be in Zagreb. For a short intro to DEB theory visit the DEB Wikipedia page , and for more about DEB visit our main DEB portal. The DEBnet page links to DEBnodes comprising an international network of expertise on Dynamic Energy Budgets. For context, here you can find a non-extensive list of scientific publications that use DEB theory and models, grouped per area (ecology, evolution) and groups of organisms -- from bacteria and plants to fish and mammals.

AmPCro - Add-my-Pet project in Croatia. The project is funded by the European Union as part of the NextGenerationEU program.