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It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins

BACKGROUND: Birds may allocate a significant part of time to comfort behavior (e.g., preening, stretching, shaking, etc.) in order to eliminate parasites, maintain plumage integrity, and possibly reduce muscular ankylosis. Understanding the adaptive value of comfort behavior would benefit from knowl...

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Autores principales: Viblanc, Vincent A., Mathien, Adeline, Saraux, Claire, Viera, Vanessa M., Groscolas, René
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3139590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21818253
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021110
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author Viblanc, Vincent A.
Mathien, Adeline
Saraux, Claire
Viera, Vanessa M.
Groscolas, René
author_facet Viblanc, Vincent A.
Mathien, Adeline
Saraux, Claire
Viera, Vanessa M.
Groscolas, René
author_sort Viblanc, Vincent A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Birds may allocate a significant part of time to comfort behavior (e.g., preening, stretching, shaking, etc.) in order to eliminate parasites, maintain plumage integrity, and possibly reduce muscular ankylosis. Understanding the adaptive value of comfort behavior would benefit from knowledge on the energy costs animals are willing to pay to maintain it, particularly under situations of energy constraints, e.g., during fasting. We determined time and energy devoted to comfort activities in freely breeding king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), seabirds known to fast for up to one month during incubation shifts ashore. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A time budget was estimated from focal and scan sampling field observations and the energy cost of comfort activities was calculated from the associated increase in heart rate (HR) during comfort episodes, using previously determined equations relating HR to energy expenditure. We show that incubating birds spent 22% of their daily time budget in comfort behavior (with no differences between day and night) mainly devoted to preening (73%) and head/body shaking (16%). During comfort behavior, energy expenditure averaged 1.24 times resting metabolic rate (RMR) and the corresponding energy cost (i.e., energy expended in excess to RMR) was 58 kJ/hr. Energy expenditure varied greatly among various types of comfort behavior, ranging from 1.03 (yawning) to 1.78 (stretching) times RMR. Comfort behavior contributed 8.8–9.3% to total daily energy expenditure and 69.4–73.5% to energy expended daily for activity. About half of this energy was expended caring for plumage. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This study is the first to estimate the contribution of comfort behavior to overall energy budget in a free-living animal. It shows that although breeding on a tight energy budget, king penguins devote a substantial amount of time and energy to comfort behavior. Such findings underline the importance of comfort behavior for the fitness of colonial seabirds.
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spelling pubmed-31395902011-08-04 It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins Viblanc, Vincent A. Mathien, Adeline Saraux, Claire Viera, Vanessa M. Groscolas, René PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Birds may allocate a significant part of time to comfort behavior (e.g., preening, stretching, shaking, etc.) in order to eliminate parasites, maintain plumage integrity, and possibly reduce muscular ankylosis. Understanding the adaptive value of comfort behavior would benefit from knowledge on the energy costs animals are willing to pay to maintain it, particularly under situations of energy constraints, e.g., during fasting. We determined time and energy devoted to comfort activities in freely breeding king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), seabirds known to fast for up to one month during incubation shifts ashore. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A time budget was estimated from focal and scan sampling field observations and the energy cost of comfort activities was calculated from the associated increase in heart rate (HR) during comfort episodes, using previously determined equations relating HR to energy expenditure. We show that incubating birds spent 22% of their daily time budget in comfort behavior (with no differences between day and night) mainly devoted to preening (73%) and head/body shaking (16%). During comfort behavior, energy expenditure averaged 1.24 times resting metabolic rate (RMR) and the corresponding energy cost (i.e., energy expended in excess to RMR) was 58 kJ/hr. Energy expenditure varied greatly among various types of comfort behavior, ranging from 1.03 (yawning) to 1.78 (stretching) times RMR. Comfort behavior contributed 8.8–9.3% to total daily energy expenditure and 69.4–73.5% to energy expended daily for activity. About half of this energy was expended caring for plumage. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This study is the first to estimate the contribution of comfort behavior to overall energy budget in a free-living animal. It shows that although breeding on a tight energy budget, king penguins devote a substantial amount of time and energy to comfort behavior. Such findings underline the importance of comfort behavior for the fitness of colonial seabirds. Public Library of Science 2011-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3139590/ /pubmed/21818253 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021110 Text en Viblanc et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Viblanc, Vincent A.
Mathien, Adeline
Saraux, Claire
Viera, Vanessa M.
Groscolas, René
It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title_full It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title_fullStr It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title_full_unstemmed It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title_short It Costs to Be Clean and Fit: Energetics of Comfort Behavior in Breeding-Fasting Penguins
title_sort it costs to be clean and fit: energetics of comfort behavior in breeding-fasting penguins
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3139590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21818253
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021110
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