- rejected material
- undigested material
- fecal loss
- unused dissolved substrate
- reflected or uncaptured radiation
Operational definition
Accounting partition.
The portion of acquired or encountered resources that does not enter the organism’s metabolically accessible internal pool.
It may include:
- rejected material;
- unabsorbed food;
- fecal or egested matter;
- reflected or transmitted radiation;
- incompletely ingested prey;
- substrate that contacts the system but is not transported inward.
It excludes compounds that were assimilated and later excreted.