The travel speeds of large animals are limited by their heat-dissipation capacities.

ABSTRACT: Movement is critical to animal survival and, thus, biodiversity in fragmented landscapes. Increasing fragmentation in the Anthropocene necessitates predictions about the movement capacities of the multitude of species that inhabit natural ecosystems. This requires mechanistic, trait-based animal locomotion models, which are sufficiently general as well as biologically realistic. While larger animals should generally be able to travel greater distances, reported trends in their maximum speeds across a range of body sizes suggest limited movement capacities among the largest species. Here, we show that this also applies to travel speeds and that this arises because of their limited heat-dissipation capacities. We derive a model considering how fundamental biophysical constraints of animal bo

SUBMITTER: Dyer A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10112811 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature