Description
However well the anatomy of the gastro-intestinal tracts of a wide range of mammals is described and quantified, there can be no real explanation of observed patterns without consideration of the mechanical and chemical properties of the food consumed, and of the digestive stages involved in its processing. This book aims to integrate findings from the many different types of investigations of mammalian digestive systems into a coherent whole. Using the themes of food, form and function, researchers discuss models of digestive processes, linking this with evolutionary aspects of food utilisation. Macroscopic and ultrastructural studies of the gastro-intestinal tract are also presented, as are physiological, ecological and biochemical aspects of the digestion of different food types. The book ends with an integrative chapter, bringing together the themes running through the earlier sections.
Chapter
Some examples from the literature: things are rarely as we expect them
Modelling from the bottom-up: an example with nectar- and fruit-feeding birds
Future challenges for digestive tract models?
4 Optimum gut structure for specified diets
Digestion and fermentation
Fore- and hindgut fermenters
5 Foods and the digestive system
6 Classification of foods for comparative analysis of the gastro-intestinal tract
Types of food classification
7 The 'carnivorous' herbivores
8 Nutritional ecology of fruit-eating and flower-visiting birds and bats
Bird/bat preferences and the chemical composition of plant rewards
9 Herbivory and niche partitionings
The pregastric fermenter's niche
Comparative nutritional niche space of PGFs and Non-PGFs
Nutritional niche segregation: any need to invoke competition?
An ecologist's perspective
10 Taste discrimination and diet differentiation among New World primates
Taste responses of primates
Taste and dietary adaptations
11 Potential hominid plant foods from woody species in semi-arid versus sub-humid sub-tropical Africa
12 The form of selected regions of the gastro-intestinal tract
13 Categorisation of food items relevant to oral processing
Description of the process of mastication
Characterisation of the food input
Adaptation of the dentition
14 A direct method for measurement of gross surface area of mammalian gastro-intestinal tracts
15 Morphometric methods for determining surface enlargement at the microscopic level in the large intestine and their application
16 Weaning time and bypass structures in the forestomachs of Marsupialia and Eutheria
17 Adaptations in the large intestine allowing small animals to eat fibrous foods
Colonic separation mechanisms (CSM)
18 Foraging and digestion in herbivores
19 Gut morphology, body size and digestive performance in rodents
20 The integrated processing response in herbivorous small mammals
21 Digestive constraints on dietary scope in small and moderately-small mammals: how much do we really understand?
Some notes about terminology
Evidence for fibre-intolerance below 15 kg body mass
Current models relating body size to digestive strategy in mammals
Models relating gut function and digestive strategy to chemical reactortheory (reactor-based models)
Digestive and metabolic strategies
Summary of trends: fibre-tolerance/intolerance among small mammalsin relation to gut function
Issues: how much do we really understand?
22 The effects and costs of allelochemicals for mammalian herbivores: an ecological perspective
Methods of dealing with allelochemicals
Assessing the effects and costs of allelochemicals: what currency touse?
23 Short-chain fatty acids as a physiological signal from gut microbes
Effects of SCFA on motility of the ruminant digestive tract
Effects of SCFA on motility of the digestive tract in non-ruminant animals
Physiological significance of the effects of SCFA on gut motility
Mucosal blood flow of the digestive tract
Effects of SCFA on endocrine pancreatic secretion in ruminants
Effects of SCFA on endocrine pancreatic secretion in non-ruminant animals
Effect of SCFA on pancreatic exocrine secretion
Gut epithelial cell proliferation
Part V Synthesis and perspectives
24 Food, form and function: interrelationships and future needs All contributors (operating in three groups)
The Digestive System in Mammals
：Food Form and Function
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