Advancing Aquatic Animals Nutrition: Functional Additives and Physiological Regulation
A special issue of Fishes (ISSN 2410-3888). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition and Feeding".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 14 July 2026 | Viewed by 14
Special Issue Editors
Interests: aquaculture health management; host–pathogen interactions; shrimp immunology; environmental stress physiology; essential oils and plant-derived bioactives
Interests: shrimp aquaculture; industrialized recirculating aquaculture facilities; biofloc technology; aquaculture health management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Functional nutritional additives and their physiological regulatory mechanisms have emerged as a central research frontier in aquatic animal nutrition, driven by the urgent need to reduce antibiotic dependence, improve production efficiency, and enhance resilience to environmental stressors in modern aquaculture. This Special Issue, ‘Advancing Aquatic Animals Nutrition: Functional Additives and Physiological Regulation’, aims to provide an integrated platform for cutting-edge studies that elucidate the efficacy, mechanisms, and practical applications of functional additives across diverse aquatic taxa, including fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and amphibians.
The scope of this Special Issue encompasses, but is not limited to, plant-derived bioactive compounds, probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics, functional lipids, immunostimulants, and emerging natural or engineered additives. Particular emphasis will be placed on their roles in regulating growth performance, immune competence, antioxidant capacity, gut health, stress tolerance, metabolic homeostasis, and host–microbiota interactions under both optimal and challenging rearing conditions.
Situated within the rapidly expanding body of literature on sustainable and health-oriented aquaculture nutrition, this Special Issue seeks to move beyond descriptive evaluations of additive effects toward mechanistic insights derived from multi-omics approaches, physiological assays, and systems-level analyses. By bridging fundamental nutritional physiology with applied aquaculture practices, the collected contributions will advance theoretical understanding while supporting the development of antibiotic-free, efficient, and environmentally responsible aquaculture systems.
Dr. Xiaoting Zheng
Dr. Jiasong Zhang
Dr. Biao Han
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fishes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- aquatic animal nutrition
- nutritional functional additives
- physiological regulation
- sustainable aquaculture
- antibiotic alternatives
- immunomodulation
- stress resistance
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