@article{MartinCreuzburgOexleWacker2014,
  author    = {Martin-Creuzburg, Dominik and Oexle, Sarah and Wacker, Alexander},
  title     = {Thresholds for sterol-limited growth of Daphnia magna: A comparative approach using 10 different sterols},
  series = {Journal of chemical ecology},
  volume    = {40},
  journal   = {Journal of chemical ecology},
  number    = {9},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {Dordrecht},
  issn      = {0098-0331},
  doi       = {10.1007/s10886-014-0486-1},
  pages     = {1039 -- 1050},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Arthropods are incapable of synthesizing sterols de novo and thus require a dietary source to cover their physiological demands. The most prominent sterol in animal tissues is cholesterol, which is an indispensable structural component of cell membranes and serves as precursor for steroid hormones. Instead of cholesterol, plants and algae contain a variety of different phytosterols. Consequently, herbivorous arthropods have to metabolize dietary phytosterols to cholesterol to meet their requirements for growth and reproduction. Here, we investigated sterol-limited growth responses of the freshwater herbivore Daphnia magna by supplementing a sterol-free diet with increasing amounts of 10 different phytosterols and comparing thresholds for sterol-limited growth. In addition, we analyzed the sterol composition of D. magna to explore sterol metabolic constraints and bioconversion capacities. We show that dietary phytosterols strongly differ in their potential to support somatic growth of D. magna. The dietary threshold concentrations obtained by supplementing the different sterols cover a wide range (3.5-34.4 mu g mg C-1) and encompass the one for cholesterol (8.9 mu g mg C-1), indicating that certain phytosterols are more efficient in supporting somatic growth than cholesterol (e.g., fucosterol, brassicasterol) while others are less efficient (e.g., dihydrocholesterol, lathosterol). The dietary sterol concentration gradients revealed that the poor quality of particular sterols can be alleviated partially by increasing dietary concentrations, and that qualitative differences among sterols are most pronounced at low to moderate dietary concentrations. We infer that the dietary sterol composition has to be considered in zooplankton nutritional ecology to accurately assess potential sterol limitations under field conditions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{LukasWacker2014,
  author    = {Lukas, Marcus and Wacker, Alexander},
  title     = {Daphnia's dilemma: adjustment of carbon budgets in the face of food and cholesterol limitation},
  series = {The journal of experimental biology},
  volume    = {217},
  journal   = {The journal of experimental biology},
  number    = {7},
  publisher = {Company of Biologists Limited},
  address   = {Cambridge},
  issn      = {0022-0949},
  doi       = {10.1242/jeb.094151},
  pages     = {1079 -- 1086},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {We studied the carbon (C) metabolism in Daphnia when the amount of C (food quantity) and/or the content of biochemical nutrients (food quality) was limiting. Growth performances and C budgets of Daphnia magna (assimilation, faeces egestion, excretion and respiration measured by [C-14]-tracing) were analysed when animals were raised on different food quantities and concentrations of cholesterol, an essential biochemical food compound. Cholesterol is of special interest because it not only acts as limiting nutrient but also contributes to the overall C pool of the animals. As the tissue cholesterol concentration in Daphnia is quite low, we hypothesized the selective exclusion of cholesterol from C budgeting and tested this using radiolabelled cholesterol. Somatic growth rates of D. magna were highest at high quantity and quality and were reduced to a moderate value if either the food quantity or the cholesterol concentration was low. Growth was lowest at low food quantity and quality. The measurements of C budgets revealed high regulative response to low food quality at high food quantity only. Here, low dietary cholesterol caused bulk C assimilation efficiency (AE) to decrease and assimilated (excess) C to be increasingly respired. Additionally, Daphnia enhanced efficient adjustment of C budgets when facing cholesterol limitation by (1) increasing the AE of the cholesterol itself and (2) not changing cholesterol respiration, which was still not detectable. In contrast, at low food quantity, Daphnia is unable to adjust for low food quality, emphasizing that food limitation could overrule food quality effects.},
  language  = {en}
}