Meeting Abstract
Feeding frequency in ectotherms can vary based upon both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including food size and availability, developmental state, body condition, life history, and season. Optimal Foraging Theory, if extended to digestive physiology, would suggest that organisms to feed at a frequency that would maximize conversion of food into body tissue (growth) while minimizing the physiological costs associated with digestion and assimilation. Using juvenile snakes as models, we demonstrate an optimal feeding frequency that maximizes growth when food amount is held constant. Our findings strongly suggest that underlying physiological mechanisms bracketing this frequency is the costs associated with Specific Dynamic Action on the low end and the costs associated with up-regulation of an atrophied digestive system on the high end. We also show that optimal feeding frequency varies among species. The adaptive significance of this phenomenon remains speculative, but it may be influenced by historic prey availability and/or niche partitioning. We continue to gather data on different species to investigate the ubiquity of this physiological trait among ectotherms.
