Background. With increasing sophistication and technology, survival rates hugely improved among preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Nutrition and feeding remain a challenge and preterm infants are at high risk of encountering oral feeding difficulties. Objective. To determine what facts may impact on oral feeding readiness and competence and which kind of interventions...

The paradox of secondary metabolites, toxic defence compounds produced by plants, in nectar and fruits is well known. Deterrence of feeding by nectarivorous and frugivorous birds is better understood than the effect of these chemicals on the digestive performance of birds. Digestive parameters such as transit time and sugar assimilation are important in assessing nutrient utilization and deterr...

Piscivory has independently evolved numerous times amongst snakes, and therefore these animals provide a powerful opportunity to test for convergent evolution in a vertebrate feeding system. In this study, we integrate performance trials with comparative methods to test the hypothesis that piscivory drives convergence in trophic morphology and feeding performance among natricine snakes. Within ...

Small changes in size can lead to potential performance consequences and may influence an organism's ability to utilize resources in its environment. As the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) transitions between neonate, juvenile and adult habitats (ontogenetic niche shifts), there are inevitably dynamic changes in their feeding performance. This study sought to investigate the sca...

The feeding performance of individual hatchery-reared (HR) and wild juvenile spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus was compared across a series of six 1·5 h feeding exposures over a 3 day period in a controlled experiment. The predation cycle served as a context for discerning feeding performance elements. The experimental design facilitated assessments of the effects of experience, motivation d...

In many cooperatively-breeding species, the presence of one or more helpers improves the reproductive performance of the breeding pair receiving help. Helper contributions can take many different forms, including allo-feeding, offspring provisioning, and offspring guarding or defence. Yet, most studies have focussed on single forms of helper contribution, particularly offspring provisioning, an...

Effects of dietary synbiotics on growth performance, survival, stress resistance, body composition and immune response in the Caspian roach (Rutilus rutilus) were evaluated. Fish with an initial average weight of 4.14±0.25 g were randomly distributed into tanks (50 fish per tank) and triplicate groups were fed a control diet or diets containing 1 g kg-1 and 2 g kg-1 synbiotics. After an 8-week ...

Snakes exhibit an apparent dichotomy in the regulation of gastrointestinal (GI) performance with feeding and fasting; frequently feeding species modestly regulate intestinal function whereas infrequently feeding species rapidly upregulate and downregulate intestinal function with the start and completion of each meal, respectively. The downregulatory response with fasting for infrequently feedi...

The experiment aimed to study the effect of post-hatch early held feeding times starter supplemented with egg yolk and white on growth performance, viscera development and immune response in broiler chickens. The working hypothesis was based on the fact that better development of the gastrointestinal tract and immunity system in the first week of the chicks' life affects positively the growth p...