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An ectotherm (from the Greek ἐκτός (ektós) "outside" and θερμός (thermós) "heat"), more commonly referred to as a " cold-blooded animal ", [1] is an animal in which internal physiological sources of heat, such as blood, are of relatively small or of quite negligible importance in controlling body temperature. [2]
Bergmann's rule. Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographical rule that states that, within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, while populations and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions. The rule derives from the relationship between size in linear dimensions ...
A few decades later, Atkinson (1994) performed a similar review of temperature effects on body size in ectotherms. His study, which included 92 species of ectotherms ranging from animals and plants to protists and bacteria, concluded that a reduction in temperature resulted in an increase in organism size in 83.5% of cases.
Allen's rule is an ecogeographical rule formulated by Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, [2][3] broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have shorter and thicker limbs and bodily appendages than animals adapted to warm climates. More specifically, it states that the body surface-area-to-volume ratio for homeothermic animals varies with the ...
Empirical evidence in terrestrial plants, also suggests that density scales as -3/4 power of the body size. [32] Observed patterns of diversity can be similarly explained by MTE. It has long been observed that there are more small species than large species. [33] In addition, there are more species in the tropics than at higher latitudes. [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 ...
Mesotherms have two basic characteristics: [1] Elevation of body temperature via metabolic production of heat. Weak or absent metabolic control of a particular body temperature. The first trait distinguishes mesotherms from ectotherms, the second from endotherms. For instance, endotherms, when cold, will generally resort to shivering or ...
t. e. Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation.