ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
High energetic cost of color change in octopuses.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 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
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Natural Habitat and Wild Behaviors of the Dwarf Cuttlefish,Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Larval Pigmentation Reveals Environmental and Genetic Influences in Hybridizing Ambystoma Salamanders.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Flap-necked chameleons change colour to match their background.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
For many animals, color change is a critical adaptive mechanism believed to carry a substantial energetic cost. Yet, no study to date has directly measured the energy expenditure associated with this process. We examined the metabolic cost of color change in octopuses by measuring oxygen consumption in samples of excised octopus skin during periods of chromatophore expansion and contraction and then modeled metabolic demand over the whole octopus as a function of octopus mass. The metabolic demand of the fully activated chromatophore system is nearly as great as an octopus's resting metabolic rate. This high metabolic cost carries ecological and evolutionary implications, including selective pressures in octopuses that may influence the adoption of nocturnal lifestyles, the use of dens, the reduction of the chromatophore system in deep-sea species, and metabolic trade-offs associated with foraging.
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