Appetite Interrupted The Role of Predators in Shaping the Behavioral Ecology and Physiology of Satiety

About this book

Appetite Interrupted: The Role of Predators in Shaping the Behavioral Ecology and Physiology of Satiety examines the mechanisms that suppress feeding in vertebrate animals within the physiological and ecological contexts that drove their evolution. It emphasizes the role of predation as a selective pressure, noting that the adaptive significance of these inhibitory mechanisms may help identify novel neuroendocrine pathways in future research.

Written by a leading expert in the field, this book systematically explores the behavioural ecology, evolutionary pressures, physiological processes, and stressors that impact foraging and feeding behaviors in vertebrates. Early chapters address why animals stop eating, reviewing the selective pressures that drive the evolution of both slow and rapid mechanisms for suppressing hunger and appetite. Central chapters delve into the physiological controls that have evolved to inhibit feeding, including the immense impacts of stress, anxiety, and fear on food intake. The book concludes with an examination of these pathways in humans and the evolution of obesity.

While Appetite Interrupted comparatively approaches the mechanisms controlling food intake, predation, and hunger from an ecological perspective, its coverage of disordered satiety translates to practical and clinical applications of human nutrition. It is therefore an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and industry professionals across broad animal science and healthcare fields.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The ecology of eating
3. Is predation the cost for being fat?
4. Slow mechanisms for inhibiting eating: appetite, satiety and their control
5. Rapid mechanisms for inhibiting eating: worms, antiworms, and lasers, oh my
6. How stress, anxiety and fear affect eating
7. Predators and the evolution of obesity in humans

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Biography

Dr James Carr is a Professor at Texas Tech University. He obtained his BSc at Rutgers University and his PhD at the University of Colorado. He studies neuroendocrinology and the environmental endocrinology of amphibians and fishes, and he has taught courses in physiology, endocrinology, histology, and neurobiology. His endocrine research focuses on the neuroendocrinology of stress, the role of visual system neuropeptides in behavioural tradeoffs, and lab and field studies into the role of EDCs that adversely influence thyroid and reproductive physiology.