Dataset Information

Extreme hyperthermia tolerance in the world's most abundant wild bird.

ABSTRACT: The thermal tolerances of vertebrates are generally restricted to body temperatures below 45-47 °C, and avian and mammalian critical thermal maxima seldom exceed 46 °C. We investigated thermoregulation at high air temperatures in the red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea), an African passerine bird that occurs in flocks sometimes numbering millions of individuals. Our data reveal this species can increase its body temperature to extremely high levels: queleas exposed to air temperature?>?45 °C increased body temperature to 48.0?±?0.7 °C without any apparent ill-effect, with individual values as high as 49.1 °C. These values exceed known avian lethal limits, with tolerance of body temperature?>?48 °C unprecedented among birds and mammals.

SUBMITTER: Freeman MT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7403380 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Extreme hyperthermia tolerance in the world's most abundant wild bird.

Freeman M T MT Czenze Z J ZJ Schoeman K K McKechnie A E AE

Scientific reports 20200804 1

The thermal tolerances of vertebrates are generally restricted to body temperatures below 45-47 °C, and avian and mammalian critical thermal maxima seldom exceed 46 °C. We investigated thermoregulation at high air temperatures in the red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea), an African passerine bird that occurs in flocks sometimes numbering millions of individuals. Our data reveal this species can increase its body temperature to extremely high levels: queleas exposed to air temperature > 45 °C increa ...[more]

PMID: 32753751

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Project description:BackgroundEffective conservation management of highly mobile species depends upon detailed knowledge of movements of individuals across their range; yet, data are rarely available at appropriate spatiotemporal scales. Flying-foxes (Pteropus spp.) are large bats that forage by night on floral resources and rest by day in arboreal roosts that may contain colonies of many thousands of individuals. They are the largest mammals capable of powered flight, and are highly mobile, which makes them key seed and pollen dispersers in forest ecosystems. However, their mobility also facilitates transmission of zoonotic diseases and brings them in conflict with humans, and so they require a precarious balancing of conservation and management concerns throughout their Old World range. Here, we analyze the Australia-wide movements of 201 satellite-tracked individuals, providing unprecedented detail on the inter-roost movements of three flying-fox species: Pteropus alecto, P. poliocephalus, and P. scapulatus across jurisdictions over up to 5 years.ResultsIndividuals were estimated to travel long distances annually among a network of 755 roosts (P. alecto, 1427-1887 km; P. poliocephalus, 2268-2564 km; and P. scapulatus, 3782-6073 km), but with little uniformity among their directions of travel. This indicates that flying-fox populations are composed of extremely mobile individuals that move nomadically and at species-specific rates. Individuals of all three species exhibited very low fidelity to roosts locally, resulting in very high estimated daily colony turnover rates (P. alecto, 11.9 ± 1.3%; P. poliocephalus, 17.5 ± 1.3%; and P. scapulatus, 36.4 ± 6.5%). This indicates that flying-fox roosts form nodes in a vast continental network of highly dynamic "staging posts" through which extremely mobile individuals travel far and wide across their species ranges.ConclusionsThe extreme inter-roost mobility reported here demonstrates the extent of the ecological linkages that nomadic flying-foxes provide across Australia's contemporary fragmented landscape, with profound implications for the ecosystem services and zoonotic dynamics of flying-fox populations. In addition, the extreme mobility means that impacts from local management actions can readily reverberate across jurisdictions throughout the species ranges; therefore, local management actions need to be assessed with reference to actions elsewhere and hence require national coordination. These findings underscore the need for sound understanding of animal movement dynamics to support evidence-based, transboundary conservation and management policy, tailored to the unique movement ecologies of species.

Dataset Information

Extreme hyperthermia tolerance in the world's most abundant wild bird.

Publications

Extreme hyperthermia tolerance in the world's most abundant wild bird.

Similar Datasets

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