energy expenditure
- Slowing down the metabolic engine: impact of early-life corticosterone exposure on adult metabolism in house sparrows (Passer domesticus)
Highlighted Article: Developmental corticosterone exposure can orient the phenotype towards an energy-saving strategy in adult sparrows and there are both benefits and costs that could be associated with this reduced metabolism.
- How humans initiate energy optimization and converge on their optimal gaits
Summary: Combining human experiments with computational reinforcement learning models reveals how the nervous system discovers energy optimal gaits.
- Subtle short-term physiological costs of an experimental augmentation of fleas in wild Columbian ground squirrels
Summary: Short-term physiological influences of parasite–host interactions in a wild population of Columbian ground squirrels were minimal, suggesting evolutionary cost minimization in both parasites and hosts.
- Regression dilution in energy management patterns
Summary: Patterns of energy management in animals inferred from slope estimates from linear regressions of energy expenditure can be affected by regression dilution unless r2 is very high, influencing the accuracy and interpretation of these estimates.
- Glucocorticoid–temperature association is shaped by foraging costs in individual zebra finches
Summary: The association between baseline corticosterone and temperature was steeper in zebra finches living in a high- versus low-foraging-costs environment, which supports the metabolic explanation of glucocorticoid variation.
- In vivo aerobic metabolism of the rainbow trout gut and the effects of an acute temperature increase and stress event
Summary: In vivo recordings of gut oxygen uptake in a teleost fish demonstrate a high metabolic sensitivity to an acute temperature increase, as well as the metabolic responses to stress.
- Melatonin attenuates phenotypic flexibility of energy metabolism in a photoresponsive mammal, the Siberian hamster
Summary: Perception of stress in photoresponsive mammals exposed to short days is reduced, and although they secrete more stress hormones in the cold, their flexibility of energy metabolism is attenuated.
- A different angle: comparative analyses of whole-animal transport costs when running uphill
Summary: Across-species analysis of the energy costs to run uphill highlights the importance of considering relative, proportional and absolute measures, and of interpretation within an ecological context, for example, in terms of the energy landscape.
- Energetics of communal roosting in chestnut-crowned babblers: implications for group dynamics and breeding phenology
Highlighted Article: Cooperatively breeding chestnut-crowned babblers save considerable energy by group roosting within enclosed nests; this economy helps explain the species' social dynamics and breeding phenology.