Expertise of MoSAR will mainly focus on the animal as level of organization, with the lactating goat as the main animal model (but not exclusively). Moreover, in collaboration with other research units, we will also work on lower (organs) and higher (herd) levels of animal organization in order to respectively: 

• identify main mechanisms determining the relationship between robustness and feed efficiency, and
• integrate them at the herd level. As robustness is difficult to be measure directly, the project will specifically address the question of feed efficiency characterization and its modeling, trying to quantify and predict the respective contributions of acquisition efficiency and allocation efficiency and their interrelationships along the animal lifespan.

The project will also develop phenotypic characterization of animals at the different levels of organization in order to quantify individual variability in feed efficiency, assuming that individual variation in feed efficiency results from individual variation at the digestive level and/or at the metabolic level and with possible interaction between them. To do this, we will generalize the use of automated measures at our experimental facilities. The ultimate goals is to associate animal phenotyping with models to provide tools helping to manage robustness at the animal level and later at the herd level, by integrating these knowledge and models at the herd level.