PH73CH04-Karasov ARI 3 January 2011 9:50 Ecological Physiology of Diet and Digestive Systems William H. Karasov,1,∗ Carlos Martınez´ del Rio,2 and Enrique Caviedes-Vidal3 1Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706; email:
[email protected] 2Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82070; email:
[email protected] 3Departamento de Bioquımica´ y Ciencias Biologicas,´ Universidad Nacional de San Luis and Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biologicas´ de San Luis, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientıficas´ y Tecnicas,´ 5700 San Luis, Argentina; email:
[email protected] Annu. Rev. Physiol. 2011. 73:69–93 Keywords The Annual Review of Physiology is online at adaptation, hydrolases, transporters, microbiome physiol.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: Abstract 10.1146/annurev-physiol-012110-142152 The morphological and functional design of gastrointestinal tracts of Copyright c 2011 by Annual Reviews. by University of Wyoming on 02/14/11. For personal use only. many vertebrates and invertebrates can be explained largely by the in- All rights reserved teraction between diet chemical constituents and principles of economic 0066-4278/11/0315-0069$20.00 design, both of which are embodied in chemical reactor models of gut Annu. Rev. Physiol. 2011.73:69-93. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org ∗Corresponding author. function. Natural selection seems to have led to the expression of diges- tive features that approximately match digestive capacities with dietary loads while exhibiting relatively modest excess. Mechanisms explain- ing differences in hydrolase activity between populations and species include gene copy number variations and single-nucleotide polymor- phisms.