ArticleScientific reports2019
Cassowary casques act as thermal windows.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Body surface temperatures as biomarkers of physiological environmental adaptation in wild birds and mammals.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Ultraviolet light illuminates species-specific biofluorescent casque patterns in cassowaries (Casuarius).Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Infrared thermography is a useful tool in research on thermoregulation and evolution of heat tolerance.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- The living dinosaur: accomplishments and challenges of reconstructing dinosaur physiology.Biology letters · 2025Review
- Cranial functional specialisation for strength precedes morphological evolution in Oviraptorosauria.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Heritable variation in thermal profiles is associated with reproductive success in the world's largest bird.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Birds are better at regulating heat loss through their legs than their bills: implications for body shape evolution in response to climate.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Physiologically vulnerable or resilient? Tropical birds, global warming, and redistributions.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Intraspecific variation and directional casque asymmetry in adult southern cassowaries (Casuarius casuarius).Journal of anatomy · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many ideas have been put forward for the adaptive value of the cassowary casque; and yet, its purpose remains speculative. Homeothermic animals elevate body temperature through metabolic heat production. Heat gain must be offset by heat loss to maintain internal temperatures within a range for optimal performance. Living in a tropical climate, cassowaries, being large bodied, dark feathered birds, are under thermal pressure to offload heat. We tested the original hypothesis that the casque acts as a thermal window. With infrared thermographic analyses of living cassowaries over an expansive range of ambient temperatures, we provide evidence that the casque acts as a thermal radiator, offloading heat at high temperatures and restricting heat loss at low temperatures. Interestingly, at intermediate temperatures, the casque appears thermally heterogeneous, with the posterior of the casque heating up before the front half. These findings might have implications for the function of similar structures in avian and non-avian dinosaurs.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.