“…Digestive tract adjustments, like changing organ size or length (Bergot, Blanc & Escaffre, 1981) and rates of protein synthesis, retention and degradation (Carter & Houlihan, 2001), are often associated with the amount of nutrients and energy that fish consume and assimilate. A multitude of studies have shown that the response of the digestive tract will vary with the intensity of the energetic demand imposed on the animal (Naya et al, 2007), the frequency of feeding in nature (Secor & Diamond, 2000;Secor, 2005aSecor, , 2005b, the time to and type of first feed consumed by fish larvae (Kolkovski, 2001;Ching et al, 2016), the environmental conditions experienced by different populations of the same species (Kristan & Hammond, 2003;Bacigalupe et al, 2004;Tracy & Diamond, 2005), and the level of environmental variability under which different species have evolved (Naya, Bozinovic & Karasov, 2008). When fed ad libitum and reared in the same environmental conditions, phenotypic changes that result in an increase in the functional capacity of the digestive system are likely to lead to better performance and interindividual differences in fish growth.…”