ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Cool echidnas survive the fire.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Are Hibernators Toast? Global Climate Change and Prolonged Seasonal Hibernation.Global change biology · 2026Review
- The Mechanisms Through Which Fire Drives Population Change in Terrestrial Biota.Global change biology · 2025Review
- Environmental and population correlates of variation in short torpor use by wild hazel dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius).Oecologia · 2025Article
- Optimal sampling interval for characterisation of the circadian rhythm of body temperature in homeothermic animals using periodogram and cosinor analysis.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Long-term survival, temperature, and torpor patterns.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Whole-body endothermy: ancient, homologous and widespread among the ancestors of mammals, birds and crocodylians.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Article
- The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring.Nature · 2022Article
- Body Temperature Frequency Distributions: A Tool for Assessing Thermal Performance in Endotherms?Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- Thermal energetics and behaviour of a small, insectivorous marsupial in response to the interacting risks of starvation and predation.Oecologia · 2019Article
- A burning question: what are the risks and benefits of mammalian torpor during and after fires?Conservation physiology · 2018Review
- More functions of torpor and their roles in a changing world.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2017Review
- Post-fire recovery of torpor and activity patterns of a small mammal.Biology letters · 2017Article
- Torpor and basking after a severe wildfire: mammalian survival strategies in a scorched landscape.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2017Article
- Searching for the Haplorrhine Heterotherm: Field and Laboratory Data of Free-Ranging Tarsiers.Frontiers in physiology · 2017Article
- Phoenix from the Ashes: Fire, Torpor, and the Evolution of Mammalian Endothermy.Frontiers in physiology · 2017Article
- Energy Homeostasis in Monotremes.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2017Review
- Can hibernators sense and evade fires? Olfactory acuity and locomotor performance during deep torpor.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2016Article
- Post-wildfire physiological ecology of an Australian microbat.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fires have occurred throughout history, including those associated with the meteoroid impact at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary that eliminated many vertebrate species. To evaluate the recent hypothesis that the survival of the K-Pg fires by ancestral mammals was dependent on their ability to use energy-conserving torpor, we studied body temperature fluctuations and activity of an egg-laying mammal, the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), often considered to be a 'living fossil', before, during and after a prescribed burn. All but one study animal survived the fire in the prescribed burn area and echidnas remained inactive during the day(s) following the fire and substantially reduced body temperature during bouts of torpor. For weeks after the fire, all individuals remained in their original territories and compensated for changes in their habitat with a decrease in mean body temperature and activity. Our data suggest that heterothermy enables mammals to outlast the conditions during and after a fire by reducing energy expenditure, permitting periods of extended inactivity. Therefore, torpor facilitates survival in a fire-scorched landscape and consequently may have been of functional significance for mammalian survival at the K-Pg boundary.
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