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A Single Origin of Heterothermy in Mammals

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Book cover Living in a Seasonal World

Abstract

Some mammal lineages survived the global fires that occurred in the hours following the asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Yucatan, at the Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary (K/T Boundary) 65 mya. Several studies have proposed that it was the capacity for torpor and refuge underground, in tree holes, caves, and underwater, that ensured the short- and long-term survival of the post-impact conditions. Here I test the hypothesis that heterothermy was a pleisiomorphic condition in ancestral mammals which allowed certain mammal lineages to survive the K/T Boundary. I employed a maximum likelihood approach to reconstruct the likely heterothermic status of the last mammalian ancestor. With our current knowledge, the probability of heterothermy (58%) slightly exceeds that of no heterothermy. However, if some mammals that have yet to be studied, but which have been identified as highly likely heterotherms, are scored as heterotherms, the proportional likelihood of heterothermy in ancestral mammals exceeds the 96% probability. At the least, these data confirm that there was single origin of heterothermy in mammals, but further research is required to determine how extensive heterothermy was in Mesozoic mammals.

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Acknowledgments

The research was financed by incentive grants from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the National Research Foundation, South Africa.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209, South Africa

    Barry G. Lovegrove

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  1. Barry G. Lovegrove
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Correspondence to Barry G. Lovegrove .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Forschungsinst. Wildtierkunde und, Ökologie, Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien, Veterinärplatz 1, Wien, 1210, Austria

    Thomas Ruf

  2. Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, Savoyenstr. 1, Vienna, 1160, Austria

    Claudia Bieber

  3. Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, Savoyenstr. 1, Vienna, 1160, Austria

    Walter Arnold

  4. , Dept. of Behavioural Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstr. 14, Vienna, 1160, Austria

    Eva Millesi

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Lovegrove, B.G. (2012). A Single Origin of Heterothermy in Mammals. In: Ruf, T., Bieber, C., Arnold, W., Millesi, E. (eds) Living in a Seasonal World. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28678-0_1

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