Mikayla Bolander

1 Introduction Food consumption influences both energy intake and energy expenditure of individual animals (Jobling 2017). During digestion, metabolic rates rise in a process commonly known as specific dynamic action (SDA), or the heat of digestion, or the heat increment of feeding (Secor 2008; Jobling 2017). This process accounts for the energy needed to process and move food through the gut and digestive tract.

2.1 Limb mass as a proxy for energy allocated to limb regeneration Energy allocated to limb regeneration is evident, in part, as increased metabolism to support protein synthesis of regenerating tissue. Fletcher et al. (2022) measured the metabolic rate of uninjured H. sanguineus and of crabs with varying numbers of missing limbs and found that metabolic rate generally increased linearly with the number of limbs that were missing.