Universal metabolic constraints shape the evolutionary ecology of diving in animals
Authors/Creators
- 1. Radboud University Nijmegen
- 2. Université du Québec à Rimouski
- 3. University of La Rochelle
- 4. Plymouth University
- 5. University of California, Riverside
Description
Diving as a lifestyle has evolved on multiple occasions when air-breathing terrestrial animals invaded the aquatic realm, and diving performance shapes the ecology and behaviour of all air-breathing aquatic taxa, from small insects to great whales. Using the largest dataset yet assembled, we show that maximum dive duration increases predictably with body mass in both ectotherms and endotherms. Compared to endotherms, ectotherms can remain submerged for longer, but the mass scaling relationship for dive duration is much steeper in endotherms than in ectotherms. These differences in diving allometry can be fully explained by inherent differences between the two groups in their metabolic rate and how metabolism scales with body mass and temperature. Therefore, we suggest that similar constraints on oxygen storage and usage have shaped the evolutionary ecology of diving in all air-breathing animals, irrespective of their evolutionary history and metabolic mode. The steeper scaling relationship between body mass and dive duration in endotherms not only helps explain why the largest extant vertebrate divers are endothermic rather than ectothermic, but also fits well with the emerging consensus that large extinct tetrapod divers (e.g. plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs) were endothermic.
Notes
there are three files:
1. dataset on dive duration
2. phylogenetic tree of the taxa in the dataset
3. R script to analyse the data using PGLS
1. Data set with records (rows) on dive duration for different species, compiled from published literature.
Column names:
- Species: the species name of individual to which the datarecord pertains;
- Endo.vs..Ecto: classifies the species as either an endotherm (bird or mammal) or an ectotherm (insect, amphibian or reptile);
- Mass..kg.: body mass of the individual to which the datarecord pertains in kilograms;
- Dive.duration..min: reported mean dive duration in minutes;
- Maximum.dive.duration..min: reported maximum dive duration in minutes;
- Temerature: Relevant temperature of the individual during the dive. For endotherms this is body temperature in most cases, whereas for the smaller ectotherms this is water temperature;
- Remarks: remarks taken from the study to help identify the conditions that pertain to the datarecord. If the temperature is not obtained from the literature source, the relevant source is also stated here;
- Literature.source: Primary source for the data record;
- Selected: a column which indicates whether a record was used in the analysis on 95th percentile of maximum dive duration, accounting for temperature;
- Treenames: a column with the names that are identical to those used in the phylogenetic tree
2. phylogenetic tree of the taxa in the dataset
Tree in nexus format saved as a .txt file which includes 281 taxa and has branchlengths derived from TimeTree
3. R script to analyse the data using PGLS
Rscript which reproduce the results from the PGLS analysis in Table 1 in the paper which reports on this dataset.
Funding provided by: Seventh Framework Programme
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100011102
Award Number: FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG
Funding provided by: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000038
Award Number: RGPIN-2015-06500
Funding provided by: NSF grant
Funding provided by: FP7 Ideas: European Research Council
Award Number: FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG proposal N° 334048
Funding provided by: FP7 Ideas: European Research Council
Award Number: Marie-Curie Fellow
Funding provided by: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000038
Award Number:
Funding provided by: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Funding provided by: Natural Environment Research Council
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000270
Award Number:
Files
Diving_dataset.csv
Additional details
Related works
- Is cited by
- 10.1098/rspb.2020.0488 (DOI)