About this book
First published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, series B, volume 326 (no. 1237), pages 515-692.
Discusses the behavioural, physiological and biochemical responses of animals to cold, as well as including details of anatomical adaptations. It draws together the results of much recent research into topics such as hibernation, antifreezes in fish, the evolution of warm-bloodedness and the importance of cold to evolution and extinction.
Contents
Part 1 Introductory material: basic concepts - temperature, water and low temperature, colligative properties of aqueous solutions, categories of body temperature control, zone of neutrality, critical temperatures, Newton's Law of Cooling, thermal conductance, windchill, cold acclimatization and adaptation, heat production; the cold environment - present conditions, palaeoclimatology, climatic zones, high latitude microhabitats. Part 2 Behaviour, anatomy and physiology: behavioural responses to low temperature - movement, basking, gregariousness, shelter; anatomy and physiology of endotherms - shape, size and climate, structural insulation (fur, fat and feathers), vascular arrangements to minimize heat loss, physiological insulation, thermogenesis; sleep, torpor and hibernation - in ectotherms, in endotherms, supercooled hibernation in endotherms, hibernation in bears. Part 3 Life at temperatures below 0 C: subzero survival in terrestrial animals - survival of insects and other terrestrial arthropods, freezing-tolerance in terrestrial vertebrates; subzero temperatures and marine ectotherms - supercooling in deep-water fish, heightened plasma osmolarity in cold-water fish, antifreezes in high-latitude fish, eggs of the capelin, freezing in intertidal invertebrates, freezing avoidance by intertidal invertebrates. Part 4: Man and cold - human morphology and cold, physiological/metabolic adaptations and responses, damage by cold, clothing, shelter, fire, cold and human diet, medical hypothermia, cold technology. Part 5 Cold and evolution: evolution and low temperature - general considerations, cold and the evolution of endothermy, cold and extinction.
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