The geometry of nutrition: the protein leverage hypothesis and why the Atkins diet won’t work for gorillas 
18 May 2012
3pm - 4pm
Pro Vice-Chancellor Tāmaki Innovation Campus Seminar Series
Venue: Lecture Theatre 732.201, Tāmaki Innovation Campus
Host: Tāmaki Innovation Campus Management
Speaker: Professor David Raubenheimer, Institute of Natural Resources, Massey University
Abstract
Nutrition is a complex process of matching multiple and dynamic nutrient needs to variable, changing and sometimes hostile foods. And yet animals have evolved highly effective regulatory strategies for dealing with this complexity. For biologists, however, the challenge remains of how to understand – and, in many cases to manage (e.g. animal husbandry, conservation biology and human nutrition) - these complex processes. In this talk I will show how simple geometry can be used for this. I will introduce the basic concepts of a geometric framework for nutrition, and present examples from my own research demonstrating how this framework has been applied. These examples span a range of species (from insects to monkeys, gorillas and humans) and research contexts (from laboratory studies to the free-ranging animals in the wild), with an overall focus on the topical issue of human obesity.
Profile
David Raubenheimer was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He completed a B.Sc. and MSc at the University of Cape Town, before moving to Oxford in 1987 to do a PhD in insect nutrition. In 1991 David took up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, and in 1992 returned to Oxford as Lecturer in the Zoology Department and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College. In 2003 David moved to New Zealand, where he is Professor of Nutritional Ecology at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Massey University. David’s research focuses on comparative nutritional ecology, with an emphasis on field studies. His work spans marine and terrestrial systems, and diverse species including insects, spiders, fish, birds and mammals, among them humans and non-human primates. He is an author on over 130 scientific papers, and co-author with long-time collaborator Prof. Steve Simpson (Sydney) of a new book titled The Nature of Nutrition: a Unifying Framework from Animal Adaptation to Human Obesity (Princeton University Press).
The seminar will be followed by drinks in the Function Room 220, Building 730 (4pm to 5.30pm).
For catering purposes, please RSVP to:
Suzanne Mitchell
Communications & Events Co-ordinator
Email: suzanne.mitchell@auckland.ac.nz
