Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is thought to play a significant physiological role during arousal when body temperature rises from the extremely low body temperature that occurs during hibernation. The dominant pathway of BAT thermogenesis occurs through the β(3)-adrenergic receptor. In this study, we investigated the role of the β(3)-adrenergic system in BAT thermogenesis during arousal from hiber...

Flight ability is generally expected to increase with relative flight muscle mass. Changes in weight can therefore be expected to influence the capacity to rapidly take-off, which can determine mating success and predator avoidance. This study examined the influence of relative flight muscle mass, sex, and season on free take-off flight ability in a butterfly model (Aglais urticae) that undergo...

Jt is now well established that myocardial dysfunction, once thought to be indicative of irreversible tissue damage, is in many cases reversible. This has led to the concepts of myocardial "stunning"1'2 and "hibernation."3 In both of these conditions, myocardial function is reversibly compromised; in stunning, myocardial function is decreased in response to a previous ischemic insult, and blood...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate many physiological processes through post-transcriptional control of gene expression and are a major part of the small noncoding RNAs (snRNA). As hibernators can survive at low body temperatures (Tb) for many months without suffering tissue damage, understanding the mechanisms that enable them to do so are of medical interest. Because the brain integrates peripheral ...

During hibernation at ambient temperatures (T(a)) above 0 degrees C, rodents typically maintain body temperature (T(b)) approximately 1 degrees C above T(a), reduce metabolic rate, and suspend or substantially reduce many physiological functions. We tested the extent to which the presence of an insulative pelage affects hibernation. T(b) was recorded telemetrically in golden-mantled ground squi...

Disuse by bed rest, limb immobilization or space flight causes rapid bone loss by arresting bone formation and accelerating bone resorption. This net bone loss increases the risk of fracture upon remobilization. Bone loss also occurs in hibernating ground squirrels, golden hamsters, and little brown bats by arresting bone formation and accelerating bone resorption. There is some histological ev...

We investigated the patterns of hibernation and arousals in seven free-ranging echidnas Tachyglossus aculeatus setosus (two male, five female) in Tasmania using implanted temperature data loggers. All echidnas showed a 'classical' pattern of mammalian hibernation, with bouts of deep torpor interrupted by periodic arousals to euthermia (mean duration 1.04+/-0.05 (n=146). Torpor bout length incre...

Hibernation is a complex physiological response that some mammalian species employ to evade energetic demands. Previous work in mammalian hibernators suggests that hibernation is activated not by a set of genes unique to hibernators, but by differential expression of genes that are present in all mammals. This question of universal genetic mechanisms requires further investigation and can only ...