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  • Title: Low metabolism in a tropical bat from lowland Panama measured using heart rate telemetry: an unexpected life in the slow lane.
    Author: Dechmann DK, Ehret S, Gaub A, Kranstauber B, Wikelski M.
    Journal: J Exp Biol; 2011 Nov 01; 214(Pt 21):3605-12. PubMed ID: 21993789.
    Abstract:
    Animals must optimize their daily energy budgets, particularly if energy expenditures are as high as they are in flying animals. However, energy budgets of free-ranging tropical animals are poorly known. Newly miniaturized heart rate transmitters enabled this to be addressed this in the small, energetically limited, neotropical bat Molossus molossus. High-resolution 48 h energy budgets showed that this species significantly lowers its metabolism on a daily basis, even though ambient temperatures remain high. Mean roosting heart rate was 144 beats min(-1), much lower than expected for a 10 g bat. Low roosting heart rates combined with short nightly foraging times (37 min night(-1)) resulted in an estimated energy consumption of 4.08 kJ day(-1), less than one-quarter of the predicted field metabolic rate. Our results indicate that future research may reveal this as a more common pattern than currently assumed in tropical animals, which may have implications in the context of the effect of even small temperature changes on tropical species.
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