Meeting Abstract

S6.7  Monday, Jan. 5  Self-Medication in Domestic Herbivores PROVENZA, F.D.*; VILLALBA, J.J.; Utah State University; Utah State University fred.provenza@usu.edu

Imagine an animal foraging in an environment with 25 to 50 plant species that all differ in their concentrations of energy, protein, minerals, and vitamins. Moreover, they all contain secondary compounds that at too high doses can be toxic, but that at the appropriate doses can have nutritional and medicinal benefits. Envision further that how much of any one food an animal can eat depends on the other foods it selects because nutrients and secondary compounds interact one with another. Clearly, given many plant species and their biochemical interactions, there are a great many possibilities for mixing and matching to create a diet. Which plants should an animal choose, and when sick, should it trade-off some nutrients for medicinal secondary compounds? Animals maintain their health and well-being through behavioral interactions influenced by history, necessity, and chance such that at any time an animals foraging behavior depends on 1) its evolutionary history, genetically expressed, in concert with its uniquely individualistic history of the social and biophysical environments where it was conceived and reared, 2) necessity due to its current nutritional, toxicological and pathogenic challenges relative to the biochemical characteristics of foods it can potentially consume at any moment, and 3) chance occurrences that involve gene expression and environmental variability.