It may also be a secondary effect in biological systems exposed to abitoc stress. This could affect dietary habits or reduce feed intake. There are several publicatons on this.
One study by Olsvik et al. https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-14-817
Not sure about detailed studies on this but maybe the following to think about.
Essential trace elements in higher organisms are tightly regulated, meaning absorption capacity and/or endogenous losses are increased and decreased, respectively, during deficiency and the response turns to the opposite during sufficient and oversupply.
Stress is a quite demanding processes with regards to trace element requirements (e.g. Zn) and may cause a temporal emptying of body stores. This, however, should not be definite when supply conditions are sufficient, meaning that after an adaptation period of a view days the absorptive capacity should be increased according to the increased demand and, at the same time, losses are reduced as far as possible. Therefore, initial losses should be compensated over the further course of time. Of course, all of this assumes that feed intake is not affected and there is some sort of safety margin with respect to the dietary concentration of a certain trace element. Hence, if increased heat stress causes lower body stores over a longer period of time, I would assume feed intake, or dietary concentrations with trace elements, or both are insufficient for the respective situation.
Overall, it is an interesting question to work on and colleagues in the aquaculture and fish biology fields should do some metabolism trials to either confirm or reject the very essence of my previous jibber-jabber, which has been primarily based on my experience with terrestrial vertebrates. Would be especially interesting to look at metabolic demands as affected by ambient temperature from perspective of a species that is not warm blooded. So, I will wait for your papers eagerly ;-)
Thank you very much, Daniel Brugger !
Can you recommend me a few publications where such effects are shown in terrestrial vertebrates?
Tanja Kögel you are very welcome!
Just write me an email to my institute address and I will have a look through my archive: [email protected]
Not at the office currently and I know I will forget if not remined in my inbox ;)
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