Why bears hibernate? Redefining the scaling energetics of hibernation.

ABSTRACT: Hibernation is a natural state of suspended animation that many mammals experience and has been interpreted as an adaptive strategy for saving energy. However, the actual amount of savings that hibernation represents, and particularly its dependence on body mass (the 'scaling') has not been calculated properly. Here, we estimated the scaling of daily energy expenditure of hibernation (DEE_H), covering a range of five orders of magnitude in mass. We found that DEE_H scales isometrically with mass, which means that a gram of hibernating bat has a similar metabolism to that of a gram of bear, 20 000 times larger. Given that metabolic rate of active animals scales allometrically, the point where these scaling curves intersect with DEE_H represents the mass where e

SUBMITTER: Nespolo RF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9043729 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature