Cellular metabolic rate is influenced by life-history traits in tropical and temperate birds.

ABSTRACT: In general, tropical birds have a "slow pace of life," lower rates of whole-animal metabolism and higher survival rates, than temperate species. A fundamental challenge facing physiological ecologists is the understanding of how variation in life-history at the whole-organism level might be linked to cellular function. Because tropical birds have lower rates of whole-animal metabolism, we hypothesized that cells from tropical species would also have lower rates of cellular metabolism than cells from temperate species of similar body size and common phylogenetic history. We cultured primary dermal fibroblasts from 17 tropical and 17 temperate phylogenetically-paired species of birds in a common nutritive and thermal environment and then examined basal, uncoupled, and non-mitochondrial cellu

SUBMITTER: Jimenez AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3907555 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature