Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) models are crucial tools for understanding the impacts of anthropogenic pressures on organisms and ecosystems. While the current kappa-rule (kDEB) models effectively capture long-term environmental changes, they struggle with short-term fluctuations (e.g., starvation, acute pollution) and lack a direct link to organismal physiology. This limits their application in fields like biotechnology and pharmacology.

The AdvanDEB project proposes developing a new theoretical framework, based on transport-network DEB (tDEB) models, to address these limitations. tDEB models incorporate a transport compartment (e.g., blood) which allows for rapid energy and material exchange, improving the representation of short-term responses and linking model variables to physiological characteristics. This approach has shown promise in specialized models, but broader application is hindered by challenges related to physiological concordance, reproductive energy allocation, generality, contextualization within existing bioenergetic theories (kDEB and MTE), and standardization.

The AdvanDEB project aims to tackle these challenges, leveraging existing DEB resources and expertise, to establish tDEB as a valuable tool for investigating short-term environmental impacts and potentially unifying core concepts in bioenergetics.