Assimilated food, conversion efficiency

Many of the deleterious metabolic or chronic effects of plant allelochemlcals may be due to these Interactions. Many of the types of Interactions discussed In vertebrate nutrition literature may also be Important in insect dietetics (14). Certain allelochemlcals structurally resemble essential nutrients closely enough to compete metabolically (35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40). Allelochemlcals may block the bloavallablllty of nutrients by reducing assimilation, efficiency of conversion of assimilated food, or the efficiency of conversion of ingested food (, 44, 46). 

Three of the most useful nutritional indices are assimilation (AD), efficiency of conversion of assimilated food (ECD), and efficiency of conversion of Ingested food (ECI). These and a number of other indices were recently discussed by Scriber and Slansky (22). If growth is inhibited, then it must either be reflected in the amount eaten or in one or more of these Indices or both. 

In recent western literature, Kt is interpreted as gross conversion efficiency and the western analogue of K2 is net conversion efficiency (Brett and Groves, 1979), but the biological sense of the two coefficients can be obscured by such generalized semantics. A better concept is efficiency of food consumption and assimilation for constructive processes (Zaika, 1983). 

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