Energy saving in huddling penguins

Ancel, André; Visser, H. K. A.; Handrich, Yves; Masman, Dirkjan; LeMaho, Yvon

doi:10.1038/385304a0

Cited by 110 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Thus, rather than an ameliorated microclimate as observed in emperor penguin huddles 4,28 and suggested for adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) crèches 29, it could be the better sleep that represents the key energetic benefit of aggregations for king penguin chicks. Heterothermy as an energy-saving physiological response seems particular important for young dependent penguins, having little behavioural means of balancing their energy budgets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Heterothermy in growing king penguins

et al. 2011

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A drop in body temperature allows significant energy savings in endotherms, but facultative heterothermy is usually restricted to small animals. Here we report that king penguin chicks (Aptenodytes patagonicus), which are able to fast for up to 5 months in winter, undergo marked seasonal heterothermy during this period of general food scarcity and slow-down of growth. They also experience short-term heterothermy below 20 °C in the lower abdomen during the intense (re)feeding period in spring, induced by cold meals and adverse weather. The heterothermic response involves reductions in peripheral temperature, reductions in thermal core volume and temporal abandonment of high core temperature. Among climate variables, air temperature and wind speed show the strongest effect on body temperature, but their effect size depends on physiological state. The observed heterothermy is remarkable for such a large bird (10 kg before fasting), which may account for its unrivalled fasting capacity among birds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Heterothermy in growing king penguins

et al. 2011

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“…R. Soc. B 283: 20152946 aggregations as living shields against environmental extremes, is seen, for example, in emperor penguins who form rotating huddles as protection against extreme Antarctic winds [30,31]. The worms are likely to find greater individual safety in these hugely dense aggregations and may even be able to defend themselves collectively through the mass production of dimethylsulfoniopropionate [8,32,33].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social behaviour and collective motion in plant-animal worms

et al. 2016

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Social behaviour may enable organisms to occupy ecological niches that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Here, we test this major evolutionary principle by demonstrating self-organizing social behaviour in the plant-animal, Symsagittifera roscoffensis. These marine aceol flat worms rely for all of their nutrition on the algae within their bodies: hence their common name. We show that individual worms interact with one another to coordinate their movements so that even at low densities they begin to swim in small polarized groups and at increasing densities such flotillas turn into circular mills. We use computer simulations to: (i) determine if real worms interact socially by comparing them with virtual worms that do not interact and (ii) show that the social phase transitions of the real worms can occur based only on local interactions between and among them. We hypothesize that such social behaviour helps the worms to form the dense biofilms or mats observed on certain sunexposed sandy beaches in the upper intertidal of the East Atlantic and to become in effect a super-organismic seaweed in a habitat where macro-algal seaweeds cannot anchor themselves. Symsagittifera roscoffensis, a model organism in many other areas in biology (including stem cell regeneration), also seems to be an ideal model for understanding how individual behaviours can lead, through collective movement, to social assemblages.

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“…As with multicellularity, sociality is also thought to allow the colonization of ecological niches not accessible to solitary individuals (5). Naked mole rats, for instance, are capable of inhabiting the extremely arid deserts of southern Africa by cooperatively searching for new food patches after heavy and unpredictable rains have softened the soil enough for digging (6), and emperor penguins are able to withstand the frigid winters of Antarctica by huddling together to maintain warmth (7,8). Among cooperative foragers, tree-killing bark beetles and social carnivores are capable of obtaining resources-live trees or large animals, respectively-that solitary individuals are unable to access (9)(10)(11)(12).…”

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confidence: 99%

Cooperative capture of large prey solves scaling challenge faced by spider societies

Yip

Powers

Avilés

2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

163

145

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A decrease in the surface area per unit volume is a well known constraint setting limits to the size of organisms at both the cellular and whole-organismal levels. Similar constraints may apply to social groups as they grow in size. The communal three-dimensional webs that social spiders build function ecologically as single units that intercept prey through their surface and should thus be subject to this constraint. Accordingly, we show that web prey capture area per spider, and thus number of insects captured per capita, decreases with colony size in a neotropical social spider. Prey biomass intake per capita, however, peaks at intermediate colony sizes because the spiders forage cooperatively and larger colonies capture increasingly large insects. A peaked prey biomass intake function would explain not only why these spiders live in groups and cooperate but also why they disperse only at large colony sizes, thus addressing both sociality and colony size range in this social spider. These findings may also explain the conspicuous absence of social spiders from higher latitudes and higher elevations, areas that we have previously shown to harbor considerably fewer insects of the largest size classes than the lowland tropical rainforests where social spiders thrive. Our findings thus illustrate the relevance of scaling laws to the size and functioning of levels of organization above the individual.Anelosimus ͉ cooperation ͉ group foraging ͉ sociality ͉ allometry

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Energy saving in huddling penguins

Cited by 110 publications

References 5 publications

Heterothermy in growing king penguins

Heterothermy in growing king penguins

Social behaviour and collective motion in plant-animal worms

Cooperative capture of large prey solves scaling challenge faced by spider societies

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