Marsupial Nutrition

Abstract

In the early 1980s advances in marsupial biology could no longer be encapsulated in a single volume such as Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe's "Life of Marsupials" and Cambridge University Press commissioned a series of monographs covering a range of different topics in marsupial biology. As it was, only three of that series were realized and among them was the ptedecessor to this book "Digestive Physiology and Nutrition of Marsupials" published in 1982. "Marsupial Nutrition" is a considerably expanded and comprehensive review of studies of nutrition and digestive physiology of Australasian and South American marsupials. In Australia, many ecologists view the limited nutrient status of our soils and vegetation as a fundamental limit to animal populations. This book explains firstly how Australian marsupials have responded to those limitations and secondly asks whether these responses are common amongst marsupials living in New Guinea and South America.