Web of Science
For finding journal articles, use the Web of Science first.
Search terms could be: (Digestive system* OR digestion) AND (common name OR scientific name OR family name if you want to do a broader search)
Here's some quick tips for finding important/relevant articles:
- limit search terms to the title field, find review papers
- use Refine by Document Type option on left side and choose "Review"
- sort answers by "most cited" to see papers that have been referenced the most (use pull down on right side)
- analyze results to see which authors are publishing the most on a topic (Analyze button at lower left side)
When you have a key article on a topic, it is a great way to identify additional materials by viewing cited and citing references. For example, locate Penry and Jumars article in Web of Science, view citing items. These citing items can then be refined (e.g. find review papers) or analyzed (e.g. by Subject or Source Title) to focus on particular areas of interest. Here's an initial search strategy and citation for the Penry and Jumars article.
Topic=(modeling animal guts) AND Author=(Penry AND Jumars)
Title: MODELING ANIMAL GUTS AS CHEMICAL REACTORS
Author(s): PENRY DL, JUMARS PA
Source: AMERICAN NATURALIST Volume: 129 Issue: 1 Pages: 69-96 Published: JAN 1987
Times Cited: 231
Biosis Citation Index
Michael Newman, Falconer Biology Librarian, noted: "It is easy to find articles on physiology of digestive enzymes in a particular organism. One way to do this is to use the Concept Codes:
drosophila AND 10808 (Concept Code for Physiological Studies of Enzymes) AND 14004 (Concept Code for Physiology and Biochemistry of Digestion)
Possibly by combining this with the word kinetics, one could find articles on rates of reactions in digestion."
Zoological Record
Zoological Record is another resource that might contain citations about the digestive system of an animal.
Engineering Village (EV)
EV covers more chemical engineering sources than the Web of Science. Use EV to locate articles on bioreactors, chemical engineering reactions, etc.
xSearch
xSearch allows you to search multiple resources at one time. There are 250+ resources in xSearch. They include databases, the full-text of ebooks and ejournals, data sets, images, streaming media, plus much more.