Editor's evaluation: Body mass and growth rates predict protein intake across animals

Résumé

Organisms require dietary macronutrients in specific ratios to maximize performance, and variation in macronutrient requirements plays a central role in niche determination.Although it is well recognized that development and body size can have strong and predictable effects on many aspects of organismal function, we lack a predictive understanding of ontogenetic or scaling effects on macronutrient intake.We determined protein and carbohydrate intake throughout development on lab populations of locusts and compared to late instars of field populations.Self-selected protein:carbohydrate targets declined dramatically through ontogeny, due primarily to declines in mass-specific protein consumption rates which were highly correlated with declines in specific growth rates.Lab results for protein consumption rates partly matched results from field-collected locusts.However, field locusts consumed nearly double the carbohydrate, likely due to higher activity and metabolic rates.Combining our results with the available data for animals, both across species and during ontogeny, protein consumption scaled predictably and hypometrically, demonstrating a new scaling rule key for understanding nutritional ecology. Editor's evaluationHow and why nutritional requirements change over development and differ between species are important questions with wide-ranging implications across a range of disciplines, from ecology to health.In this important study, Talal and colleagues set out to address these questions in laboratory and field experiments with grasshoppers, and with comparative analyses across different species.The laboratory experiments are convincing, and the study offers evidence of a universal shift from high protein to high carbohydrate intake during ontogeny.

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