Behavioral plasticity in two endemic rodents from the Andes Mountains: strategies for thermal and energetic balance

RUPERTO E.F; TARABORELLI PAULA; MENENDEZ J; SASSI P L

MAMMALIAN BIOLOGY

ELSEVIER GMBH

Año: 2022 vol. 1 p. 1 - 8

1616-5047

Environmental changes involve trade-offs to thermal and energetic balance thatanimals face through a diversity of physiological and behavioral strategies. InAbrothrix andinus and Akodon spegazzinii, two small rodents inhabiting the AndesMountains, some physiological traits relevant to thermal and energetic balance (e.g.conductance, basal metabolic rate) show relatively low plasticity. Therefore, behavioralplasticity could be a crucial mechanism for their adequacy to the environmentalvariability of their habitats. Following the circadian thermo-energetic hypothesis, weexplore in these species the frequency and pattern of locomotor activity in response todifferent energetic demands caused by experimental variations in ambient temperature(5, 16, and 31 °C) and food availability ( ad libitum and deprivation). Our data revealthat the behavioral strategy for coping with such challenges differs among species andpopulations, and suggest that, depending on the particular ecological context, it mayfacilitate or hinder thermal and energetic balance. Furthermore, we found that,consistently with a more limited altitudinal distribution, A. spegazzinii exhibits lowerbehavioral plasticity than A. andinus . In the context of global climate change,phenotypic plasticity is key to species resilience, and the assessment of behavioraltraits provides fundamental inputs for modeling the potential impact of future scenarioson the persistence of small highland mammals.