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Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats

Most subterranean habitats, especially caves, are considered extreme environments, mainly because of the limited and erratic food supply and constant darkness. In temperate regions, many climatic conditions, such as temperature and air humidity, are periodically less adverse or even more favourable...

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Autores principales: Kozel, Peter, Novak, Tone, Janžekovič, Franc, Lipovšek, Saška
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10267165/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37316704
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36556-9
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author Kozel, Peter
Novak, Tone
Janžekovič, Franc
Lipovšek, Saška
author_facet Kozel, Peter
Novak, Tone
Janžekovič, Franc
Lipovšek, Saška
author_sort Kozel, Peter
collection PubMed
description Most subterranean habitats, especially caves, are considered extreme environments, mainly because of the limited and erratic food supply and constant darkness. In temperate regions, many climatic conditions, such as temperature and air humidity, are periodically less adverse or even more favourable in caves than the harsh seasonal weather on the surface. Accordingly, many animal species search for hibernacula in caves. These overwintering, non-specialized subterranean species (non-troglobionts) show various modes of dormancy and ongoing development. Since they do not feed, they all undergo periodic starvation, a preadaptation, which might evolve in permanent starvation hardiness, such as found in most specialized subterranean species (troglobionts). To this end, we performed a comparative analysis of energy-supplying compounds in eleven most common terrestrial non-troglobiont species during winter in central European caves. We found highly heterogeneous responses to starvation, which are rather consistent with the degree of energetic adaptation to the habitat than to overwintering mode. The consumption of energy-supplying compounds was strongly higher taxa-dependant; glycogen is the main energy store in gastropods, lipids in insects, and arachnids rely on both reserve compounds. We assume that permanent starvation hardiness in specialized subterranean species might evolved in many different ways as shown in this study.
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spelling pubmed-102671652023-06-15 Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats Kozel, Peter Novak, Tone Janžekovič, Franc Lipovšek, Saška Sci Rep Article Most subterranean habitats, especially caves, are considered extreme environments, mainly because of the limited and erratic food supply and constant darkness. In temperate regions, many climatic conditions, such as temperature and air humidity, are periodically less adverse or even more favourable in caves than the harsh seasonal weather on the surface. Accordingly, many animal species search for hibernacula in caves. These overwintering, non-specialized subterranean species (non-troglobionts) show various modes of dormancy and ongoing development. Since they do not feed, they all undergo periodic starvation, a preadaptation, which might evolve in permanent starvation hardiness, such as found in most specialized subterranean species (troglobionts). To this end, we performed a comparative analysis of energy-supplying compounds in eleven most common terrestrial non-troglobiont species during winter in central European caves. We found highly heterogeneous responses to starvation, which are rather consistent with the degree of energetic adaptation to the habitat than to overwintering mode. The consumption of energy-supplying compounds was strongly higher taxa-dependant; glycogen is the main energy store in gastropods, lipids in insects, and arachnids rely on both reserve compounds. We assume that permanent starvation hardiness in specialized subterranean species might evolved in many different ways as shown in this study. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10267165/ /pubmed/37316704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36556-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Kozel, Peter
Novak, Tone
Janžekovič, Franc
Lipovšek, Saška
Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title_full Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title_fullStr Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title_full_unstemmed Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title_short Starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
title_sort starvation hardiness as preadaptation for life in subterranean habitats
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10267165/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37316704
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36556-9
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