期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2011
卷号:108
期号:23
页码:9513-9515
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1102965108
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Mobile ectothermic animals can control their body temperatures by selecting specific thermal conditions in the environment, but embryos--trapped within an immobile egg and lacking locomotor structures--have been assumed to lack that ability. Falsifying that assumption, our experimental studies show that even early stage turtle embryos move within the egg to exploit small-scale spatial thermal heterogeneity. Behavioral thermoregulation is not restricted to posthatching life and instead may be an important tactic in every life-history stage.