The allometry of rodent intestines

“Lovegrove and Génin (2008) measured the Tb of E. telfairi held in an outdoor enclosure during mid-winter at Berenty, Madagascar.”

“First, the well-established link between gut size and diet (Stevens and Hume 1995; Lavin et al. 2008; Lovegrove 2010) allows the use of trophic categories, for which enough data are available, to test model predictions.”

“81 82 Methods 83 Relevant publications were collated using published datasets [15-18, 23] as starting points, 84 and traced back to the original articles cited in the publications.”

“Otomys irroratus has a longer large intestine than its desertdwelling congenerics, even after accounting for body size and phylogenetic affiliations (Lovegrove, 2010), a trait which has been linked with enhanced water retention in rodents (Jackson and Spinks, 1998).”

“Bulrush is extremely low in nutrients and high in fiber, making it likely that wild Amargosa voles need specialized digestive systems to sustain themselves on an all-bulrush diet [20,21].”

“…functionality and physiology of the digestive tract has been shown in other vertebrates such as mammals (e.g., Schieck and Millar 1985; Korn 1992; Lovegrove 2010), amphibians and reptiles (e.g., Stevens and Hume 1995; O’Grady et al. 2005), and fish (e.g., German and Horn 2006; Wagner et al.…”

“Logged values for body mass and colon length were taken from Table 6 in Lovegrove (2010) and displayed in a bivariate plot (Fig. 2a).”

“As in similar large-scale comparisons in mammals [3, 39], variation due to origin (free-ranging or captive), inter-individual differences due to actual diets consumed, tissue preservation or body condition could also not be accounted for.”

“Lovegrove BG. 2010.”

“the proportion of water and fibre) in addition to energy needs for growth and reproduction (Lovegrove 2010) and also reflecting changes in the environmental and in local conditions (Corp et al.”

“Because the Amargosa vole diet is so restricted and bulrush is low in nutrients and high in fiber, it is likely that they require extensive capabilities to ferment their food (Hammond & Wunder, 1991; Lovegrove, 2010).”

“These three mammal orders have long GTs, with large fermentation chambers (Hofmann 1989; Lovegrove 2010), which increases the time of GT-seed interaction and the probabilities of negative change in the structure of the seed coat and killing of the embryo.”

“Herbivorous rodents have a longer cecum than omnivores (Lovegrove 2010).”

“While such variation may not be a systematic problem for large-scale comparisons of intestinal length (Woodall and Skinner 1993; Lavin et al. 2008; Lovegrove 2010), studies exploring quantitative differences between only a few specimens of a few species need to take this variation into account and…”

“…identification through differences in fecal particle size (Sheine & Kay, 1977; Clauss et al., 2015) and fecal nitrogen levels or fibre digestibility (Lovegrove, 2010; Clauss et al., 2015), respectively (Foley et al., 1998; Tolleson et al., 2005 and references therein; Steyaert et al., 2012).”

“…forms and functions of the digestive system are not yet fully explored in rodents, despite the fact that the comparative morphology of the gut structures has been the subject of many reviews (tullberg 1899, gorgas 1967, behMann 1973, Carleton 1973, Vo ron tsoV 1979, nauMoVa 1981, loVegroVe 2010).”

“Within mammals, the main exceptions are rodents and primates, for which scaling exponents similar to the geometric expectation have been described (Lovegrove 2010; McGrosky et al. 2019b), but a larger data collection indicated hyper‐allometric or close‐ to‐hyper‐allometric scaling (at an exponent >…”