Vascular Patterns in Iguanas and Other Squamates: Blood Vessels and Sites of Thermal Exchange.

ABSTRACT: Squamates use the circulatory system to regulate body and head temperatures during both heating and cooling. The flexibility of this system, which possibly exceeds that of endotherms, offers a number of physiological mechanisms to gain or retain heat (e.g., increase peripheral blood flow and heart rate, cooling the head to prolong basking time for the body) as well as to shed heat (modulate peripheral blood flow, expose sites of thermal exchange). Squamates also have the ability to establish and maintain the same head-to-body temperature differential that birds, crocodilians, and mammals demonstrate, but without a discrete rete or other vascular physiological device. Squamates offer important anatomical and phylogenetic evidence for the inference of the blood vessels of dinosaurs and other

SUBMITTER: Porter WR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4605690 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature