ABSTRACT
Feeding is the way in which heterotroph animals incorporate organic nitrogen and carbon for growth. Most heterotroph organisms also obtain energy in this way. Together with reproduction, feeding is a key function in evolution since metabolic energy obtainment and storage make an important contribution to survival rates. This evolutionary relevance suggests that feeding regulation should be highly redundant and conservative. Redundancy confers backup systems on functional regulation, which, while preserving the function, leads to greater complexity of the same, increasing the diffi culty of its study. On the other hand, evolutionary conservation of regulatory mechanisms makes fi sh an excellent model for studying mammalian species. However, the opposite is also true, that mammalian species are an excellent model for fi sh and fi sh research can take full advantage of previous experimental effort focusing on mammalian obesity.
