Collaborative Research: Plant Phenolics and Ruminant DietaryChoices

植物酚类决定反刍动物的饮食选择的方式，以及反刍动物的孔雀策略支配植物的酚类化学的方式将被调查。植物对觅食和放牧反刍动物的压力有不同的适应。虽然放牧互动可以是互惠互利的，但浏览互动是化感物质和解毒途径的进化斗争。在浏览互动中具有重要生态意义的化感物质包括酚类。这项关于反刍动物-酚类相互作用的跨学科研究将包括圈养鹿和绵羊的饲养试验，天然饲料的营养分析，以及植物酚类和动物新陈代谢的化学调查。缩合单宁主要影响氮经济，而可水解单宁主要作为毒素的假设将得到验证。为了验证这一假设，单宁对食草动物的影响将与对浏览器的影响进行比较，重点是唾液蛋白质在单宁解毒中的作用。此外，还将探讨可吸收酚类物质对反刍动物饮食选择的影响。不是试图确定所有酚类物质的代谢命运，而是使用基于酚类化合物的极性和溶解度的简单分级方案来建立各种植物的酚类物质谱。单一饲喂试验将被用来将酚类分布与摄食抑制相关联，而多个饲喂试验将被用来测试我们方法的预测能力。预计利用该方案，可以预测哪些牧草具有互补的化感物质特征，以及哪些牧草将通过浏览反刍动物被选为补充饲料成分。

The manner in which plant phenolics determine dietary choices of ruminants and foragine strategies of ruminants govern the phenolic chemistry of plants will be investigated. Plants have adapted differently to the stresses of browsing and grazing ruminants. While the grazing interaction can be mutualistic, the browsing interaction is an evolutionary struggle of allelochemicals and detoxification pathways. Ecologically important allelochemicals in the browsing interaction include phenolics. This interdisciplinary study of the ruminant.phenolic interaction will involve feeding trials of captive deer and sheep, nutritional analyses of natural forages, and chemical investigations of plant phenolics and animal metabolism. The hypothesis that condensed tannins primarily affect nitrogen economy, while hydrolyzable tannins predominantly act as toxins will be tested. To test this hypothesis, the effects of tannins on grazers will be compared with the effects on browsers with emphasis on the role of salivary proteins in tannin detoxification. In addition, the effect of absorable phenolics on diet selection in ruminants will be explored. Rather than attempt to determine the metabolic fates of all phenolics, the phenolic profile of various plants using a simple fractionation scheme based on the polarity and solubility of phenolics will be established. Single forage feeding trials will be used to correlate phenolic profiles with intake suppression, and multiple forage feeding trials will be used to test the predictive power of our method. It is anticipated that with this scheme, it will be possible to predict which forages have complementary allelochemical profiles, and which will be selected as complementary dietary components by browsing ruminants.