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Hypothermic abilities of migratory songbirds at a stopover site

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Abstract

Migratory birds use stopover sites for resting and feeding. Breaks after prolonged flights may allow cooling down the muscles and save energy through hypothermia. We measured hypothermic abilities in two long-distance migratory songbirds (garden warbler, Sylvia borin, and icterine warbler, Hippolais polyglotta) at a stopover site during spring migration selecting (1) birds just arrived after a prolonged flight (morning) (2) birds that had been resting in the vegetation for several hours (afternoon) and (3) birds caught in the late afternoon and kept overnight in standard conditions (night). In the first two samples, body temperature was measured immediately, 30 and 180 min after capture. In the night sample, it was measured at 1 a.m. in birds awake and asleep, and at 7 a.m., when all birds were awake. Morning birds showed the highest values (39.7°C), dropping of about 3°C after 180 min. In the afternoon birds (2), the time course was similar, but values (38.5°C) were lower than that of morning birds of about 1°C. At night, asleep birds had lower temperature than awake birds, reaching up to 10°C less than daytime values, but recovering in the early morning. Such remarkable plasticity in thermogenic abilities during migration could allow small migrants to economize energy in emergency situations.

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Acknowledgments

The study was approved by the ISPRA (ex INFS) and by Regione Lazio. We thank the volunteers helping during the ringing activities, Arien Strijkstra and Wolfgang Goymann for their comments on the data. Francesca Cirulli provided the thermometric probe. CC was supported by EU “Starflag” project n. 12682.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cell Biology and Neurosciences, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy

    Claudio Carere & Enrico Alleva

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Claudio Carere

  3. Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Graham Kerr Building, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK

    David Costantini

  4. Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione, Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Leonida Fusani

  5. Institute for Marine Research, Lysekil, Sweden

    Massimiliano Cardinale

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  1. Claudio Carere
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  2. David Costantini
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  3. Leonida Fusani
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  4. Enrico Alleva
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  5. Massimiliano Cardinale
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Correspondence to David Costantini.

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Carere, C., Costantini, D., Fusani, L. et al. Hypothermic abilities of migratory songbirds at a stopover site. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 21, 323–334 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-010-0094-0

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