Aquatic Animal Nutrition

This book is a unique cross fertilization of aquatic ecology and aquaculture. It shows how diets structure the digestive tract and its microbiota and, in turn, the microbiota influences life history traits of its host, including behavior. Short-term starvation can have beneficial effects on individuals themselves and succeeding generations which may acquire multiple stress resistances - a mechanism strengthening the persistence of populations. From terrestrial, but not yet from aquatic animals, it is understood that circadian the rhythmicity makes toxins or good food. On the long-term, the dietary basis impacts succeeding generations and can trigger a sympatric speciation by (epi)-genetics.
This volume defines gaps in nutritional research and practice of farmed fishes and invertebrates by referring to knowledge from marine and freshwater biology. It also points out that dietary benefits and deficiencies have effects on several succeeding generations, indicating that well designed diets may have the potential to successfully improve broodstock and breeding effort.

Christian E.W. Steinberg, educated as ecologist, is interested in pure and applied limnology, particularly aquatic organisms and their nutrition as well as the action of natural aquatic xenobiotic substances. Particularly, humic substances and their long-term impact in entire lake systems as well as their short-term and transgenerational effect in fishes and aquatic invertebrates have been and continue to be studied. Consequently, in 2003, he published the highly acclaimed Ecology of Humic Substances in Freshwater with Springer. The continuation of this research in­terest led to the identification of beneficial effects of natural mild environmental stresses, for instance, by dissolved humic substances, as ecological driving force and the publication of the 2012 Springer book Stress Ecology. In 2018, he began publishing the Aquatic Animal Nutrition series with Springer with "AMechanistic Perspective from Individuals to Generations" (2018), "Organic Macro- and Micro-Nutrients" (2022), and "Plant Preparations" (2024). In 1995, he was appointed chairholder of freshwater ecology at Humboldt University in Berlin and, for 10 years, director of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany. He has published more than three hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals and was frequently appointed guest professor at Salzburg University (Austria), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Huazhong Agricultural University Wuhan (China), and, since 2009 permanently, Kunming University of Science and Technology (China).

Chapter 1. Introduction: 'You Are What You Eat'.- Chapter 2. Diets and Digestive Tracts: 'Your Food Determines Your Intestine'.- Chapter 3. The Intestinal Microbiota:'Your Eating Feeds a Plethora of Guests' and 'This Plethora of Guests Determines Who You Are and How Well You Do'.- Chapter 4. Dietary Restriction, Starvation, Compensatory Growth: 'Short-Term Fasting Does Not Kill You: It Can Make You Stronger'.- Chapter 5. Chrononutrition: 'The Clock Makes Good Food'.- Chapter 6. Transgeneratinal Effects: 'Your Offspring Will Become What You Eat'.- Chapter 7. Trophic Diversification and Speciation: 'Your Eating Fuels Evolution'.