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    Can birds do it too? Evidence for convergence in evaporative water loss regulation for birds and mammals

    257793.pdf (603.7Kb)
    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Eto, E.
    Withers, Philip
    Cooper, Christine
    Date
    2017
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Eto, E. and Withers, P. and Cooper, C. 2017. Can birds do it too? Evidence for convergence in evaporative water loss regulation for birds and mammals. Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284: Article ID 20171478.
    Source Title
    Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
    DOI
    10.1098/rspb.2017.1478
    ISSN
    0962-8452
    School
    Department of Environment and Agriculture
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59419
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    Birds have many physiological characteristics that are convergent with mammals. In the light of recent evidence that mammals can maintain a constant insensible evaporative water loss (EWL) over a range of perturbing environmental conditions, we hypothesized that birds might also regulate insensible EWL, reflecting this convergence. We found that budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) maintain EWL constant over a range of relative humidities at three ambient temperatures. EWL, expressed as a function of water vapour pressure deficit, differed from a physical model where the water vapour pressure deficit between the animal and the ambient air is the driver of evaporation, indicating physiological control of EWL. Regulating EWL avoids thermoregulatory impacts of varied evaporative heat loss; changes in relative humidity had no effect on body temperature, metabolic rate or thermal conductance. Our findings that a small bird can regulate EWL are evidence that this is a common feature of convergently endothermic birds and mammals, and may therefore be a fundamental characteristic of endothermy.

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      It is a central paradigm of comparative physiology that the effect of humidity on evaporative water loss (EWL) is determined for most mammals and birds, in and below thermoneutrality, essentially by physics and is not ...
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      It is a central paradigm of comparative physiology that the effect of humidity on evaporative water loss (EWL) is determined for most mammals and birds, in and below thermoneutrality, essentially by physics and is not ...
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      © 2017 The Author(s). 'Insensible' evaporative water loss of mammals has been traditionally viewed as a passive process, but recent studies suggest that insensible water loss is under regulatory control, although the ...
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