LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Costly neighbours: Heterospecific competitive interactions increase metabolic rates in dominant species

Photo from wikipedia

The energy costs of self-maintenance (standard metabolic rate, SMR) vary substantially among individuals within a population. Despite the importance of SMR for understanding life history strategies, ecological sources of SMR… Click to show full abstract

The energy costs of self-maintenance (standard metabolic rate, SMR) vary substantially among individuals within a population. Despite the importance of SMR for understanding life history strategies, ecological sources of SMR variation remain only partially understood. Stress-mediated increases in SMR are common in subordinate individuals within a population, while the direction and magnitude of the SMR shift induced by interspecific competitive interactions is largely unknown. Using laboratory experiments, we examined the influence of con- and heterospecific pairing on SMR, spontaneous activity, and somatic growth rates in the sympatrically living juvenile newts Ichthyosaura alpestris and Lissotriton vulgaris. The experimental pairing had little influence on SMR and growth rates in the smaller species, L. vulgaris. Individuals exposed to con- and heterospecific interactions were more active than individually reared newts. In the larger species, I. alpestris, heterospecific interactions induced SMR to increase beyond values of individually reared counterparts. Individuals from heterospecific pairs and larger conspecifics grew faster than did newts in other groups. The plastic shift in SMR was independent of the variation in growth rate and activity level. These results reveal a new source of individual SMR variation and potential costs of co-occurrence in ecologically similar taxa.

Keywords: costly neighbours; competitive interactions; heterospecific competitive; interactions increase; smr; neighbours heterospecific

Journal Title: Scientific Reports
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.