Physiological and Biochemical Zoology最新文献

AbstractReduced energy intake can compromise the ability of a mammal to maintain body temperature within a narrow 24-h range, leading to heterothermy. To investigate the main drivers of heterothermy in a bulk grazer, we compared abdominal temperature, body mass, body condition index, and serum leptin levels in 11 subadult Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) during a drought year and a nondrought year. Low food availability during the drought year (as indexed by grass biomass, satellite imagery of vegetation greenness, and fecal chlorophyll) resulted in lower body condition index, lower body mass relative to that expected for an equivalent-aged buffalo, and lower leptin levels. The range of 24-h body temperature rhythm was 2°C during the nondrought year and more than double that during the drought year, and this was caused primarily by a lower minimum 24-h body temperature rhythm during the cool dry winter months. After rain fell and vegetation greenness increased, the minimum 24-h body temperature rhythm increased, and the range of 24-h body temperature rhythm was smaller than 2°C. In order of importance, poor body condition, low minimum 24-h air temperature, and low serum leptin levels were the best predictors of the increase in the range of 24-h body temperature rhythm. While the thermoregulatory role of leptin is not fully understood, the association between range of 24-h body temperature rhythm and serum leptin levels provides clues about the underlying mechanism behind the increased heterothermy in large mammals facing food restriction.

AbstractHeat waves are becoming more frequent across the globe and may impose severe thermoregulatory challenges for endotherms. Heat stress can induce both behavioral and physiological responses, which may result in energy deficits with potential fitness consequences. We studied the responses of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus), a cold-adapted ungulate, to a record-breaking heat wave in northern Finland. Activity, heart rate, subcutaneous body temperature, and body mass data were collected for 14 adult females. The post-heat wave autumn body masses were then analyzed against longitudinal body mass records for the herd from 1990 to 2021. With increasing air temperature during the day, reindeer became less active and had reduced heart rate and increased body temperature, reflecting both behavioral and physiological responses to heat stress. Although they increased activity in the late afternoon, they failed to compensate for lost foraging time on the hottest days (daily mean temperature ≥20°C), and total time active was reduced by 9%. After the heat wave, the mean September body mass of herd females ($69.7\pm 6.6$ kg, $n=52$) was on average 16.4% ± 4.8% lower than predicted ($83.4\pm 6.0$ kg). Among focal females, individuals with the lowest levels of activity during the heat wave had the greatest mass loss during summer. We show how heat waves impose a thermoregulatory challenge on endotherms, resulting in mass loss, potentially as a result of the loss of foraging time. While it is well known that environmental conditions affect large herbivore fitness indirectly through decreased forage quality and limited water supply, direct effects of heat may be increasingly common in a warming climate.

AbstractEctothermic species are dependent on temperature, which drives many aspects of their physiology, including locomotion. The distribution of the native populations of Xenopus laevis is characterized by an exceptional range in latitude and altitude. Along altitudinal gradients, thermal environments change, and populations experience different temperatures. In this study, we compared critical thermal limits and thermal performance curves of populations from the native range across an altitudinal gradient to test whether optimal temperatures for exertion differ depending on altitude. Data on exertion capacity were collected at six different temperatures (8°C, 12°C, 16°C, 19°C, 23°C, and 27°C) for four populations spanning an altitudinal gradient (60, 1,016, 1,948, and 3,197 m asl). Results show that the thermal performance optimum differs among populations. Populations from cold environments at high altitudes exhibit a lower optimal performance temperature than populations from warmer environments at lower altitudes. The ability of this species to change its optimal temperature for locomotor exertion across extremely different climatic environments within the native range may help explain its exceptional invasive potential. These results suggest that ectothermic species capable of adapting to broad altitudinal ranges may be particularly good at invading novel climatic areas, given their ability to cope with a wide range of variation in environmental temperatures.

AbstractParasites can affect host behavior, cognition, locomotion, body condition, and many other physiological traits. Changes to host aerobic metabolism may be responsible for these parasite-induced performance alterations. Whole-organism metabolic rate is underpinned by cellular energy metabolism driven most prominently by mitochondria. However, few studies have explored how mitochondrial enzymatic activity relates to body condition and parasite infection, despite it being a putative site for metabolic disruptions related to health status. We studied correlations among natural parasite infection, host body condition, and activity of key mitochondrial enzymes in target organs from wild-caught pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) to better understand the cellular responses of fish hosts to endoparasite infection. Enzymatic activities in the gills, spleen, and brain of infected fish were not significantly related to parasite infection or host body condition. However, the activity of cytochrome c oxidase, an enzyme involved in oxidative phosphorylation, in fish hearts was higher in individuals with a lower body condition. Activities of citrate synthase, electron transport system (complexes I and III), and carnitine palmitoyltransferase were also significantly different among organ types. These results provide preliminary information regarding the likely mitochondrial pathways affecting host body condition, the maintenance energetic requirements of different organs, and the organs' specific dependency on particular mitochondrial pathways. These results help pave the way for future studies on the effects of parasite infection on mitochondrial metabolism.

AbstractEarly developmental environments can shape how organisms respond to later environments, but despite the potential for this phenomenon to alter the evolution of phenotypes and their underlying mechanisms in variable environments, details of this process are not understood. For example, both temperature and parental age can alter offspring metabolic plasticity and growth within species, yet the extent of such effects is unknown. We measured the reaction norms of embryonic heart rate in response to egg temperature and the change in egg mass over the incubation period in wild house sparrows. Using Bayesian linear mixed models, we estimated covariation in the intercepts and slopes of these reaction norms among clutches and eggs. We found that heart rate intercepts, not slopes, varied among clutches and that neither intercepts nor slopes varied among eggs within clutches. In contrast, egg mass intercepts and slopes varied among clutches and eggs. Ambient temperature did not explain variance in reaction norms. Instead, individuals from older mothers were more metabolically sensitive to egg temperature and lost less mass over the incubation period than individuals from younger mothers. Nevertheless, heart rate reaction norms and egg mass reaction norms did not covary. Our results suggest that early environments influenced by parents may contribute to variation in embryonic reaction norms. The structure of variation in embryonic reaction norms that exists both among clutches and among eggs demonstrates a complexity in plastic phenotypes that should be explored in future work. Furthermore, the potential for the embryonic environment to shape the reaction norms of other traits has implications for the evolution of plasticity more broadly.

AbstractUnderstanding functional adaptation demands an integrative framework that captures the complex interactions between form, function, ecology, and evolutionary processes. In this review, we discuss how to integrate the following two distinct approaches to better understand functional evolution: (1) the adaptive landscape approach (ALA), aimed at finding adaptive peaks for different ecologies, and (2) the performance landscape approach (PLA), aimed at finding performance peaks for different ecologies. We focus on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process as the evolutionary model for the ALA and on biomechanical modeling to estimate performance for the PLA. Whereas both the ALA and the PLA have each given insight into functional adaptation, separately they cannot address how much performance contributes to fitness or whether evolutionary constraints have played a role in form-function evolution. We show that merging these approaches leads to a deeper understanding of these issues. By comparing the locations of performance and adaptive peaks, we can infer how much performance contributes to fitness in species' current environments. By testing for the relevance of history on phenotypic variation, we can infer the influence of past selection and constraints on functional adaptation. We apply this merged framework in a case study of turtle shell evolution and explain how to interpret different possible outcomes. Even though such outcomes can be quite complex, they represent the multifaceted relations among function, fitness, and constraints.

AbstractAntioxidants have important physiological roles in limiting the amount of oxidative damage that an organism experiences. One putative antioxidant is biliverdin, a pigment that is most commonly associated with the blue or green colors of avian eggshells. However, despite claims that biliverdin functions as an antioxidant, neither the typical physiological concentrations of biliverdin in most species nor the ability of biliverdin to oppose oxidative damage at these concentrations has been examined. Therefore, we quantified biliverdin in the plasma of six bird species and found that they circulated levels of biliverdin between 0.02 and 0.5 μM. We then used a pool of plasma from northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) and spiked it with one of seven different concentrations of biliverdin, creating plasma-based solutions ranging from 0.09 to 231 μM biliverdin. We then compared each solution's ability to oppose oxidative damage in response to hydrogen peroxide relative to a control addition of water. We found that hydrogen peroxide consistently induced moderate amounts of oxidative damage (quantified as reactive oxygen metabolites) but that no concentration of biliverdin ameliorated this damage. However, biliverdin and hydrogen peroxide interacted, as the amount of biliverdin in hydrogen peroxide-treated samples was reduced to approximately zero, unless the initial concentration was over 100 μM biliverdin. These preliminary findings based on in vitro work indicate that while biliverdin may have important links to metabolism and immune function, at physiologically relevant concentrations it does not detectably oppose hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidative damage in plasma.