INVESTIGADORES
LUNA Facundo
capítulos de libros
Título:
Energy budget in subterranean rodents: insights from the tuco-tuco Ctenomys talarum (Rodentia: Ctenomyidae)
Autor/es:
ANTINUCHI CD; ZENUTO RR; LUNA F; CUTRERA AP; PERISINOTTI PP; BUSCH C
Libro:
The quintessential naturalist: honoring the life and legacy of Oliver P. Pearson
Editorial:
University of California Press
Referencias:
Año: 2007; p. 111 - 139
Resumen:
We characterize the energy budget for the South American subterranean rodent Ctenomys talarum (Talas tuco-tuco), based on new and published data on energy intake (ingestion and digestion) and expenditure (cellular maintenance, thermoregulation, digging activity, movement, pregnancy, lactation and growth). Animals fed a low-quality diet ingested more food, produced more feces and showed lower incidence of coprophagy, lower digestibility, and reduced transit time relative to those fed a high-quality diet. This increase in food intake would assure similar total energy assimilation as a high-quality diet, and demonstrates that tuco-tucos can adjust their ingestive and digestive processes according to the quality of the available food resources. Digging in hard soil was energetically more expensive than digging in soft soil but the net cost of digging an entire burrow system was surprisingly low. We propose that protection against predators and lowered thermoregulatory cost are the main advantages of living underground. Energetic demands were higher for reproductive than for non-reproductive females, especially during lactation, the most energetically costly period. Pups started to eat solid food at 7-0 days old, at which point milk production represented only 8% of their energy demands. Pups became independent thermoregulators at 5 days of age. The agreement between calculated daily energy demands and daily energy assimilation (60 KJ) validates our analysis. Possible extrinsic and intrinsic limitations on C. talarum energy budget are discussed.