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Ectotherms typically have lower metabolic rates than endotherms at a given body mass. As a consequence, endotherms generally rely on higher food consumption, and commonly on food of higher energy content. Such requirements may limit the carrying capacity of a given environment for endotherms as compared to its carrying capacity for ectotherms.
Gigantothermy (sometimes called ectothermic homeothermy or inertial homeothermy) is a phenomenon with significance in biology and paleontology, whereby large, bulky ectothermic animals are more easily able to maintain a constant, relatively high body temperature than smaller animals by virtue of their smaller surface-area-to-volume ratio. [1]
The pre-flight warm-up behavior of a moth. Insect thermoregulation is the process whereby insects maintain body temperatures within certain boundaries.Insects have traditionally been considered as poikilotherms (animals in which body temperature is variable and dependent on ambient temperature) as opposed to being homeothermic (animals that maintain a stable internal body temperature ...
Animals can be further categorized as endotherms, which regulate their temperature internally, and ectotherms, which regulate temperature by the use of external heat sources. "Warm-bloodedness" is a complex and rather ambiguous term, because it includes some or all of: Homeothermy, i.e. maintaining a fairly constant body temperature.
Cold-blooded is an informal term for one or more of a group of characteristics that determine an animal's thermophysiology.These include: Ectothermy, controlling body temperature through external processes, such as by basking in the sun
Because the main source of heat for ectotherms comes from their environment, thermal requirements change from species to species depending on geographical location. Due to some species having a static preferred body temperature through generations, they are shown to exhibit behavioral adjustments in situations of drastic environment change with ...
Different species have different temperatures of their thermal neutral zones. In dogs, the thermoneutral zone ranges from 20–30 °C (68–86 °F). [9] Domestic cats have a considerably higher thermoneutral zone, ranging between 30 and 38 °C.
Because ectotherms depend on environmental conditions for body temperature regulation, they typically are more sluggish at night and in the morning when they emerge from their shelters to heat up in the first sunlight. Foraging activity is therefore restricted to the daytime (diurnal activity patterns) in most vertebrate ectotherms.