De Cuyper, A, Meloro, C, Abraham, AJ, Müller, DWH, Codron, D, Janssens, GPJ and Clauss, M (2020) The uneven weight distribution between predators and prey: Comparing gut fill between terrestrial herbivores and carnivores. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular and Integrative Physiology, 243. ISSN 1095-6433

Preview

Text The uneven weight distribution between predators and prey comparing gut fill between terrestrial herbivores and carnivores.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (914kB) | Preview

Abstract

The general observation that secondary consumers ingest highly digestible food and have simple short guts and small abdominal cavities intuitively results in the assumption that mammalian carnivores carry less digesta in their gut compared to herbivores. Due to logistic constraints, this assumption has not been tested quantitatively so far. In this contribution, we estimated the dry matter gut contents (DMC) for 25 species of the order Carnivora (including two strictly herbivorous ones, the giant and the red panda) using the physical 'Occupancy Principle', based on a literature data collection on dry matter intake (DMI), apparent dry matter digestibility (aD DM) and retention time (RT), and compared the results to an existing collection for herbivores. Scaling exponents with body mass (BM) for both carnivores and herbivores were in the same range with DMI ~ BM0.75; aD DM ~ BM0; RT ~ BM0.11 and DMC ~ BM0.88. The trophic level (carnivore vs herbivore) significantly affected all digestive physiology parameters except for RT. Numerically, the carnivore DMI level reached 77%, the RT 32% and DMC only 29% of the corresponding herbivore values, whereas the herbivore aD DM only reached 82% of that of carnivores. Thus, we quantitatively show that carnivores carry less inert mass or gut content compared to herbivores, which putatively benefits them in predator-prey interactions and might have contributed to the evolution towards unguligradism in herbivores. As expected, the two panda species appeared as outliers in the dataset with low aD DM and RT for a herbivore but extremely high DMI values, resulting in DMC in the lower part of the herbivore range. Whereas the difference in DMI and DMC scaling in herbivores might allow larger herbivores to compensate for lower diet quality by ingesting more, this difference may allow larger carnivores not to go for less digestible prey parts, but mainly to increase meal intervals, i.e. not having to hunt on a daily basis.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology, 0606 Physiology, 0608 Zoology
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology Q Science > QL Zoology Q Science > QP Physiology
Divisions:	Biological & Environmental Sciences (from Sep 19)
Publisher:	Elsevier
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	02 Apr 2020 08:40
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 07:33
DOI or ID number:	10.1016/j.cbpa.2020.110683
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12632

View Item