APPLIED ECOPHYSIOLOGY: AN INTEGRATIVE FORM TO KNOW HOW CULTURE ENVIRONMENT MODULATES THE PERFORMANCE OF AQUATIC SPECIES FROM AN ENERGETIC POINT OF VIEW

Abstract

Ecological energetics as a part of ecophysiology, appears to have grown out of the Age of enlightenment and the concerns of the physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France, were most popular during the second half of the 18th century. Physiocracy is perhaps the first well-developed theory of economics (Danbom, 1979). The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is the era in Western philosophy, intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the 18th century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. It is also known as the Age of Reason. The enlightenment was a movement of science and reason. Ecological energetic began in the works of Podolinksy in the late 1800s, and subsequently was developed by the Soviet ecologist Stanchinskii, the Austro-American Alfred James Lotka, and American limnologists, Raymond Lindeman and George Evelyn Hutchinson. It underwent substantial development by H.T. Odum and was applied by system ecologists, and radiation ecologists to understand how the forcing factors modulate the ecosystem interactions (Weiner, 2000). Currently ecophysiology is a discipline that, in aquaculture, have been widely used to establish how the environment modulates the performance of animals in order to obtain the highest amount of biomass in the shortest possible time and cost. The use of physiological capacities of organisms to obtain biomass has been one of the basic premises of the application of ecophysiological studies to the production of aquatic organisms.