Huddling house sparrows remain euthermic at night, and conserve body mass. (11th December 2012)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Huddling house sparrows remain euthermic at night, and conserve body mass. (11th December 2012)
- Main Title:
- Huddling house sparrows remain euthermic at night, and conserve body mass
- Authors:
- Burns, Darren John
Ben‐Hamo, Miriam
Bauchinger, Ulf
Pinshow, Berry - Abstract:
- <abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>An advantage of huddling in the cold is that the individual animals involved can maintain body temperature while saving energy. Since house sparrows <italic>Passer domesticus biblicus</italic> store little fat, but inhabit relatively cold climates, we tested the hypothesis that they huddle at night. While recording body temperature and body mass of 18 house sparrows when they were either caged individually, or free in an aviary, we observed that when free in the aviary, the sparrows huddled at low ambient temperatures and more birds huddled, in tighter and tighter formation, as ambient temperature decreased. However, their body temperatures were not significantly different from when they spent the night individually caged. When free to huddle, the birds lost significantly less body mass during the course of a day than when individually caged. This reduction in body mass loss may be of particular importance during periods of adverse environmental conditions, especially for small birds that manage their energy budgets on a daily basis.</p> </abstract>
- Is Part Of:
- Journal of avian biology. Volume 44:Number 2(2013:Mar.)
- Journal:
- Journal of avian biology
- Issue:
- Volume 44:Number 2(2013:Mar.)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 44, Issue 2 (2013)
- Year:
- 2013
- Volume:
- 44
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2013-0044-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 198
- Page End:
- 202
- Publication Date:
- 2012-12-11
- Subjects:
- Ornithology -- Periodicals
Ornithology -- Scandinavia -- Periodicals
598 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=showIssues&code=jav&close=2003#C2003 ↗
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1111/j.1600-048X.2012.00018.x ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0908-8857
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 4949.950000
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library STI - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 4367.xml