Common metabolic constraints on dive duration in endothermic and ectothermic vertebrates

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1 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
2 School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2334v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Ecology, Zoology
Keywords
diving behavior, metabolic theory, metabolism, thermal ecology, oxygen storage, allometry, scaling
Copyright
© 2016 Hayward et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Hayward A, Pajuelo M, Haase CG, Anderson DM, Gillooly JF. 2016. Common metabolic constraints on dive duration in endothermic and ectothermic vertebrates. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2334v1

Abstract

Dive duration in air-breathing vertebrates is thought to be constrained by the volume of oxygen stored in the body and the rate at which it is consumed (i.e., “o xygen store/usage hypothesis” ). The body mass-dependence of dive duration among endothermic vertebrates is largely supportive of this model, but previous analyses of ectothermic vertebrates show no such body mass-dependence. Here we show that dive duration in both endotherms and ectotherms largely support the oxygen store/usage hypothesis after accounting for the well-established effects of temperature on oxygen consumption rates. Analyses of the body mass and temperature dependence of dive duration in 181 species of endothermic vertebrates and 29 species of ectothermic vertebrates show that dive duration increases as a power law with body mass, and decreases exponentially with increasing temperature. Thus, in the case of ectothermic vertebrates, changes in environmental temperature will likely impact the foraging ecology of divers.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Body Mass, Temperature, and Dive Duration Data for Vertebrates

Body mass (M, in g), temperature (T, in oC), median dive time (median DT, in minutes), maximum dive time (max DT, in minutes), and the per species median and max. dive time data (in minutes) for amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2334v1/supp-1