Saving energy via short and shallow torpor bouts.

Autor: Nowack J; School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Byrom Street, Liverpool, United Kingdom; Department of Biology, Institute of Cell and Systems Biology of Animals, Functional Ecology, University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: j.nowack@ljmu.ac.uk., Mzilikazi N; Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa., Dausmann KH; Department of Biology, Institute of Cell and Systems Biology of Animals, Functional Ecology, University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of thermal biology [J Therm Biol] 2023 May; Vol. 114, pp. 103572. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Apr 26.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtherbio.2023.103572
Abstrakt: Maintaining a high and stable body temperature as observed in most endothermic mammals and birds is energetically costly and many heterothermic species reduce their metabolic demands during energetic bottlenecks through the use of torpor. With the increasing number of heterotherms revealed in a diversity of habitats, it becomes apparent that triggers and patterns of torpor use are more variable than previously thought. Here, we report the previously overlooked use of, shallow rest-time torpor (body temperature >30 °C) in African lesser bushbabies, Galago moholi. Body core temperature of three adult male bushbabies recorded over five months showed a clear bimodal distribution with an average active modal temperature of 39.2 °C and a resting modal body temperature of 36.7 °C. Shallow torpor was observed in two out of three males (n = 29 torpor bouts) between June and August (austral winter), with body temperatures dropping to an overall minimum of 30.7 °C and calculated energy savings of up to 10%. We suggest that shallow torpor may be an ecologically important, yet mostly overlooked energy-saving strategy employed by heterothermic mammals. Our data emphasise that torpor threshold temperatures need to be used with care if we aim to fully understand the level of physiological plasticity displayed by heterothermic species.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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