HYBRID EVENT: Join us in person in Rome, Italy or attend virtually from anywhere.
Nutritional Ecology is an interdisciplinary field that explores how the nutritional environment and dietary choices of organisms influence their ecology, evolution, and behavior. This branch of ecology delves into the complex interactions between animals, plants, and microorganisms, focusing on how these interactions are mediated through nutritional requirements and the strategies organisms employ to meet these needs. Nutritional Ecology examines topics such as foraging behaviour, food selection, nutrient balancing, and the role of nutrients in population dynamics, community structure, and ecosystem function.
One of the key insights from Nutritional Ecology is the concept of "nutritional wisdom," which suggests that animals are capable of selecting a diet that meets their nutritional needs from the complex array of food available in their environment. This has profound implications for understanding animal behaviour, as well as for conservation efforts, where changes in habitat can affect the availability of key nutrients and thus the survival of species.
Nutritional Ecology also investigates how nutritional factors influence the interactions between species, such as predator-prey dynamics, herbivory, and symbiotic relationships. For example, the nutritional quality of plant tissues can influence herbivore populations, which in turn affects predator abundance and plant community composition.
