RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Behavioural effects of temperature on ectothermic animals: unifying thermal physiology and behavioural plasticity
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 056051
DO 10.1101/056051
A1 Paul K. Abram
A1 Guy Boivin
A1 Joffrey Moiroux
A1 Jacques Brodeur
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/09/056051.abstract
AB Temperature imposes significant constraints on ectothermic animals, and these organisms have evolved numerous adaptations to respond to these constraints. While the impacts of temperature on the physiology of ectotherms have been extensively studied, there are currently no frameworks available that outline the multiple and often simultaneous pathways by which temperature can affect behaviour. Drawing from the literature on insects, we propose a unified framework that should apply to all ectothermic animals, generalizing temperature's behavioural effects into (1) Kinetic effects, resulting from temperature's bottom-up constraining influence on metabolism and neurophysiology over a range of timescales (from short-to long-term), and (2) Integrated effects, where the top-down integration of thermal information intentionally initiates or modifies a behaviour (behavioural thermoregulation, thermal orientation, thermosensory behavioural adjustments). We discuss the difficulty in distinguishing adaptive behavioural changes due to temperature from behavioural changes that are the products of constraints, and propose two complementary approaches to help make this distinction and class behaviours according to our framework: (i) behavioural kinetic null modeling and (ii) behavioural ecology experiments using temperature-insensitive mutants. Our framework should help to guide future research on the complex relationship between temperature and behaviour in ectothermic animals.