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2023 CBPA - Evolutionary insights towards patterns of energy allocation from ultra-endurance events.pdf (390.16 kB)

Patterns of energy allocation during energetic scarcity; evolutionary insights from ultra-endurance events

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-11, 08:32 authored by Daniel LongmanDaniel Longman, Eimear Dolan, Jonathan CK Wells, Jay T Stock
Exercise physiologists and evolutionary biologists share a research interest in determining patterns of energy allocation during times of acute or chronic energetic scarcity. Within sport and exercise science, this information has important implications for athlete health and performance. For evolutionary biologists, this would shed new light on our adaptive capabilities as a phenotypically plastic species. In recent years, evolutionary biologists have begun recruiting athletes as study participants and using contemporary sports as a model for studying evolution. This approach, known as human athletic palaeobiology, has identified ultra-endurance events as a valuable experimental model to investigate patterns of energy allocation during conditions of elevated energy demand, which are generally accompanied by an energy deficit. This energetic stress provokes detectable functional trade-offs in energy allocation between physiological processes. Early results from this modelsuggest thatlimited resources are preferentially allocated to processes which could be considered to confer the greatest immediate survival advantage (including immune and cognitive function). This aligns with evolutionary perspectives regarding energetic trade-offs during periods of acute and chronic energetic scarcity. Here, we discuss energy allocation patterns during periods of energetic stress as an area of shared interest between exercise physiology and evolutionary biology. We propose that, by addressing the ultimate “why” questions, namely why certain traits were selected for during the human evolutionary journey, an evolutionary perspective can complement the exercise physiology literature and provide a deeper insight of the reasons underpinning the body's physiological response to conditions of energetic stress.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A : Molecular and Integrative Physiology

Volume

281

Publisher

Elsevier

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2023-04-06

Publication date

2023-04-07

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

1095-6433

eISSN

1531-4332

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Danny Longman. Deposit date: 6 May 2023

Article number

111422

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