... heavier gizzards. Notably, the larger gizzard in the birds offered the unbalanced high-fibre diet was associated with marked increases in their metabolisability (digestion) of diet fibre. Our findings suggest that the available energy in the diet may be more important for eliciting phenotypic changes...

...Jan A. van Gils; Theunis Piersma; Anne Dekinga; Maurine W. Dietz SUMMARY Aiming to interpret functionally the large variation in gizzard masses of red knots Calidris canutus , we experimentally studied how the digestive processing rate is influenced by the size of the gizzard. During their non...

...J. Matthias Starck; Gamal Hasan Abdel Rahmaan SUMMARY Organisms adjust their phenotype to fluctuating conditions of the environment and to changing internal demands. We report flexible responses of the gizzard and the small intestine of Japanese quail to a high-fibre diet. Switching from a standard...

...Anne Dekinga; Maurine W. Dietz; Anita Koolhaas; Theunis Piersma SUMMARY The ability to change organ size reversibly can be advantageous to birds that perform long migrations. During winter, red knots ( Calidris canutus ) feed on shellfish and carry a muscular gizzard that weighs 10% of their body...