Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Thermoregulatory postures limit antipredator responses in peafowl.

ABSTRACT: Many animals inhabit environments where they experience temperature fluctuations. One way in which animals can adjust to these temperature changes is through behavioral thermoregulation. However, we know little about the thermal benefits of postural changes and the costs they may incur. In this study, we examined the thermoregulatory role of two postures, the head-tuck and leg-tuck posture, in peafowl (Pavo cristatus) and evaluated whether the head-tuck posture imposes a predation cost. The heads and legs of peafowl are significantly warmer when the birds exhibit these postures, demonstrating that these postures serve an important thermoregulatory role. In addition, the birds are slower to respond to an approaching threat when they display the head-tuck posture, suggesting that a thermoregulatory posture can limit antipredator behavior.

SUBMITTER: Yorzinski JL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5829511 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

Thermoregulatory postures limit antipredator responses in peafowl.

Yorzinski Jessica L JL Lam Jennifer J Schultz Rachel R Davis Melissa M

Biology open 20180105 1

Many animals inhabit environments where they experience temperature fluctuations. One way in which animals can adjust to these temperature changes is through behavioral thermoregulation. However, we know little about the thermal benefits of postural changes and the costs they may incur. In this study, we examined the thermoregulatory role of two postures, the head-tuck and leg-tuck posture, in peafowl (<i>Pavo cristatus</i>) and evaluated whether the head-tuck posture imposes a predation cost. T ...[more]

PMID: 29305466

Similar Datasets

Thermoregulatory Responses to Graded Exercise Differ among Sasang Types.

Project description:We compared sweat rate and variables such as workload (W e ), metabolic heat production (H prod), and temperature increment load (T inc) across Sasang types. 304 apparently healthy participants aged 20-49 years with their Sasang type determined were enrolled. Local sweat rates on the chest (LSRchest) and back (LSRback) were measured using a perspiration meter during a maximum treadmill exercise test. Oxygen uptake was measured continuously using a breath-by-breath mode indirect calorimeter. The TaeEum (TE) type had a larger body size, a higher percent body fat, and a lower body area surface area (BSA) to body mass compared with the other Sasang types, particularly the SoEum (SE) type. The TE type tended to have a shorter exercise time to exhaustion and lower maximal oxygen uptake (mL·kg(-1)·min(-1)) than the other types. LSRchest in TE types was greater than that of the SE and SoYang (SY) types in men, whereas LSRback was higher in the TE type than that of the other types in women. After normalizing LSR for W e , H prod, T inc, and BSA, this tendency still remained. Our findings suggest that the thermoregulatory response to graded exercise may differ across Sasang types such that the TE type was the most susceptible to heat stress.

| S-EPMC4468316 | biostudies-literature

Disrupted learning: habitat degradation impairs crucial antipredator responses in naive prey.

Project description:Habitat degradation is a global problem and one of the main causes of biodiversity loss. Though widespread, the mechanisms that underlie faunal changes are poorly understood. In tropical marine systems, corals play a crucial role in forming habitat, but coral cover on many reefs is declining sharply. Coral degradation affects the olfactory cues that provide reliable information on the presence and intensity of threat. Here, we show for the first time that the ability of a habitat generalist to learn predators using an efficient and widespread method of predator learning is compromised in degraded coral habitats. Results indicate that chemical alarm cues are no longer indicative of a local threat for the habitat generalist (the damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis), and these cues can no longer be used to learn the identity of novel predators in degraded habitats. By contrast, a rubble specialist and congeneric (Pomacentrus coelestis) responded to olfactory threat cues regardless of background environment and could learn the identity of a novel predator using chemical alarm cues. Understanding how some species can cope with or acclimate to the detrimental impacts of habitat degradation on risk assessment abilities will be crucial to defining the scope of resilience in threatened communities.

| S-EPMC4874716 | biostudies-literature

Experimentally induced antipredator responses are mediated by social and environmental factors.

Project description:Nest predation is a common cause of reproductive failure for many bird species, and various antipredator defense behaviors have evolved to reduce the risk of nest predation. However, trade-offs between current reproductive duties and future reproduction often limit the parent's ability to respond to nest predation risk. Individual responses to experimentally increased nest predation risk can give insights into these trade-offs. Here, we investigate whether social and ecological factors affect individual responses to predation risk by experimentally manipulating the risk of nest predation using taxidermic mounts in the cooperative breeding Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis). Our results show that dominant females, but not males, alarm called more often when they confront a nest predator model alone than when they do so with a partner, and that individuals that confront a predator together attacked more than those that did so alone. Dominant males increased their antipredator defense by spending more time nest guarding after a presentation with a nest predator, compared with a nonpredator control, but no such effect was found for females, who did not increase the time spent incubating. In contrast to incubation by females, nest guarding responses by dominant males depended on the presence of other group members and food availability. These results suggest that while female investment in incubation is always high and not dependent on social and ecological conditions, males have a lower initial investment, which allows them to respond to sudden changes in nest predation risk.

| S-EPMC6606998 | biostudies-literature

Short-term behavioural responses of impalas in simulated antipredator and social contexts.

Project description:Prey animals often have to trade off foraging against vigilance. However, vigilance is costly and individuals are expected to adjust their vigilance and its cost in relation to social cues and their predation risk. To test this, we conducted playback experiments in the field to study how lions' (Panthera leo) roars and male impalas' (Aepyceros melampus) territorial vocalizations affected the vigilance and foraging behaviours as well as movements of female impalas. Our results show that impalas adjusted their activities in different ways depending on the vocalizations broadcast. After lions' roars were played, female impalas increased their vigilance activity (in particular increasing their high-cost vigilance--vigilance without chewing), decreased their bite rates and increased their movements, whereas male impalas' vocalizations caused females to decrease their vigilance (decreasing their low-cost vigilance--vigilance while chewing) and increase their movements without affecting their bite rates. Therefore, it appears that predators' vocalizations stimulate anti-predator behaviours such as vigilance and movement at the expense of foraging, whereas males' vocalizations increase individuals' displacements at the expense of vigilance. Overall, this study shows that both predator and social cues have direct effects on the behaviour of gregarious prey and need to be considered in future studies.

| S-EPMC3869902 | biostudies-literature

Thermoregulatory responses in exercising rats: methodological aspects and relevance to human physiology.

Project description:Rats are used worldwide in experiments that aim to investigate the physiological responses induced by a physical exercise session. Changes in body temperature regulation, which may affect both the performance and the health of exercising rats, are evident among these physiological responses. Despite the universal use of rats in biomedical research involving exercise, investigators often overlook important methodological issues that hamper the accurate measurement of clear thermoregulatory responses. Moreover, much debate exists regarding whether the outcome of rat experiments can be extrapolated to human physiology, including thermal physiology. Herein, we described the impact of different exercise intensities, durations and protocols and environmental conditions on running-induced thermoregulatory changes. We focused on treadmill running because this type of exercise allows for precise control of the exercise intensity and the measurement of autonomic thermoeffectors associated with heat production and loss. Some methodological issues regarding rat experiments, such as the sites for body temperature measurements and the time of day at which experiments are performed, were also discussed. In addition, we analyzed the influence of a high body surface area-to-mass ratio and limited evaporative cooling on the exercise-induced thermoregulatory responses of running rats and then compared these responses in rats to those observed in humans. Collectively, the data presented in this review represent a reference source for investigators interested in studying exercise thermoregulation in rats. In addition, the present data indicate that the thermoregulatory responses of exercising rats can be extrapolated, with some important limitations, to human thermal physiology.

| S-EPMC4844073 | biostudies-other

Visual information without thermal energy may induce thermoregulatory-like cardiovascular responses.

Project description:BackgroundHuman core body temperature is kept quasi-constant regardless of varying thermal environments. It is well known that physiological thermoregulatory systems are under the control of central and peripheral sensory organs that are sensitive to thermal energy. If these systems wrongly respond to non-thermal stimuli, it may disturb human homeostasis.MethodsFifteen participants viewed video images evoking hot or cold impressions in a thermally constant environment. Cardiovascular indices were recorded during the experiments. Correlations between the 'hot-cold' impression scores and cardiovascular indices were calculated.ResultsThe changes of heart rate, cardiac output, and total peripheral resistance were significantly correlated with the 'hot-cold' impression scores, and the tendencies were similar to those in actual thermal environments corresponding to the impressions.ConclusionsThe present results suggest that visual information without any thermal energy can affect physiological thermoregulatory systems at least superficially. To avoid such 'virtual' environments disturbing human homeostasis, further study and more attention are needed.

| S-EPMC3904752 | biostudies-literature

High-quality genome assemblies provide clues on the evolutionary advantage of blue peafowl over green peafowl.

Project description:An intriguing example of differential adaptability is the case of two Asian peafowl species, Pavo cristatus (blue peafowl) and Pavo muticus (green peafowl), where the former has a "Least Concern" conservation status and the latter is an "Endangered" species. To understand the genetic basis of this differential adaptability of the two peafowl species, a comparative analysis of these species is much needed to gain the genomic and evolutionary insights. Thus, we constructed a high-quality genome assembly of blue peafowl with an N50 value of 84.81 Mb (pseudochromosome-level assembly), and a high-confidence coding gene set to perform the genomic and evolutionary analyses of blue and green peafowls with 49 other avian species. The analyses revealed adaptive evolution of genes related to neuronal development, immunity, and skeletal muscle development in these peafowl species. Major genes related to axon guidance such as NEO1 and UNC5, semaphorin (SEMA), and ephrin receptor showed adaptive evolution in peafowl species. However, blue peafowl showed the presence of 42% more coding genes compared to the green peafowl along with a higher number of species-specific gene clusters, segmental duplicated genes and expanded gene families, and comparatively higher evolution in neuronal and developmental pathways. Blue peafowl also showed longer branch length compared to green peafowl in the species phylogenetic tree. These genomic insights obtained from the high-quality genome assembly of P. cristatus constructed in this study provide new clues on the superior adaptability of the blue peafowl over green peafowl despite having a recent species divergence time.

| S-EPMC10412995 | biostudies-literature

Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures.

Project description:For humans as social beings, other people's hands are highly visually conspicuous. Exceptionally striking are hands in other than natural configuration which have been found to elicit distinct brain activation. Here we studied response strength and lateralization of this activation using event-related potentials (ERPs), in particular, occipito-temporal N1 responses as correlates of activation in extrastriate body area. Participants viewed computer-generated images of hands, half of them showing distorted fingers, the other half showing natural fingers. As control stimuli of similar geometric complexity, images of chairs were shown, half of them with distorted legs, half with standard legs. The contrast of interest was between distorted and natural/standard stimuli. For hands, stronger N1 responses were observed for distorted (vs natural) stimuli from 170 ms post stimulus. Such stronger N1 responses were found for distorted hands and absent for distorted chairs, therefore likely unrelated to visuospatial processing of the unusual distorted shapes. Rather, N1 modulation over both hemispheres - but robustly right-lateralized - could reflect distorted hands as emotionally laden stimuli. The results are in line with privileged visual processing of hands as highly salient body parts, with distortions engaging neural resources that are especially activated for biological stimuli in social perception.

| S-EPMC5658422 | biostudies-literature

Thermoregulatory Responses and Performance of Dairy Calves Fed Different Amounts of Colostrum.

Project description:This study investigates the newborn thermoregulatory responses to cold and the performance of calves fed different colostrum volumes. Thirty newborn Holstein calves were blocked by birth body weight (BW; 39.4 ± 6.5 kg) and fed different high-quality colostrum volumes: 10%, 15%, or 20% of BW, which was split and fed at 2 and 8 h after birth. At 24 h of life, calves were placed in a chamber at 10 °C for 150 min. Skin and rectal temperature (RT), heart and respiratory rate, and shivering were measured every 15 min. Blood samples were taken every 30 min. After the cold challenge, calves were housed in ambient temperature (26.8 ± 5.9 °C), with free access to water and concentrate and received 6 L/d of milk replacer. Feed intake, fecal score, and RT were recorded daily, until 56 d of age. Blood samples, BW, and body measures were taken weekly. During the cold challenge, prescapular temperature and total serum protein were greater for calves fed 15% or 20%. Leukocytes increased preweaning, presenting higher values for calves fed 20%. Even though there was a benefit for the calf submitted to cold stress on the first day of life, feeding higher volumes of colostrum resulted in no differences in performance during the preweaning phase. Nevertheless, calves fed a higher volume of colostrum (20% BW) presented increased immune responses during the preweaning phase.

| S-EPMC8001325 | biostudies-literature

Same place, different time, head up: Multiple antipredator responses to a recolonizing apex predator

Project description: Not available

| S-EPMC10591180 | biostudies-literature