Applicability of Five Diet-Selection Models to Various Foraging Challenges Ruminants Encounter
Applicability of Five Diet-Selection Models to Various Foraging Challenges Ruminants Encounter
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DOI：
10.1007/978-3-642-75118-9_22
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发表时间：
1990
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
F. Provenza;D. Balph
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
F. Provenza;D. Balph
It is common knowledge that ruminants do not forage at random, but select a diet from the plants available to them. We believe foraging environments present at least five problems or challenges to ruminants selecting dietary items:(1) variation among dietary items in kind and amount of nutritional constituents,(2) variation among potential dietary items in kind and amount of chemical defenses,(3) plant morphological defenses,(4) temporal and spatial variation in the quantity and quality of forage, and (5) exposure of ruminants to unfamiliar foraging environments. Our objective is to assess the ability of five explanations of diet selection to provide insights into the responses of ruminants to these challenges. The models are:(1) endogenously-generated hungers (euphagia),(2) immediate sensory consequences (hedyphagia),(3) body morph< rphysiology and size (morphophysiology),(4) learning through foraging consequences (learning), and (5) nutritional optimization (optimal foraging). We make the assessment by frrst describing the diet-selection challenges and then discussing the models and their applications to the challenges.
