Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 250 North Mills Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, P.O. Box 6099, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2018 Oct;135:216-223. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2018.07.003. Epub 2018 Jul 14.
To fully understand the impact of oil exposure, it is important to understand sublethal effects like how increased thermoregulatory costs may affect survival and reproduction. However, it is difficult and time-consuming to measure these effects in wild animals. We present a novel use of a bioenergetics model, Niche Mapper™, to estimate thermoregulatory impacts of oiling, using data from captive Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) experimentally exposed to oil. Oiled cormorants had significant increases in surface body temperatures following exposure. Niche Mapper accurately predicted surface temperatures and metabolic rates for unoiled and oiled cormorants and predicted 13-18% increased daily energetic demands due to increased thermoregulatory costs of oiling, consistent with increased food consumption observed in experimentally oiled cormorants. We show that Niche Mapper can provide valuable insight into sublethal oiling effects by quantifying the extent to which thermoregulatory costs divert energy resources away from important life processes like maintenance, reproduction and migration.
要充分了解石油暴露的影响，了解诸如增加的体温调节成本如何影响生存和繁殖等亚致死效应非常重要。然而，在野生动物中测量这些影响既困难又耗时。我们提出了一种新颖的使用生物能量学模型（Niche Mapper™）来估算油污对体温调节的影响，该模型使用了实验性暴露于油污的双冠鸬鹚（Phalacrocorax auritus）的数据。暴露后的鸬鹚体表温度显著升高。Niche Mapper 准确预测了未涂油和涂油鸬鹚的体表温度和代谢率，并预测由于涂油导致的体温调节成本增加，每天会增加 13-18%的能量需求，这与实验性涂油鸬鹚观察到的食物消耗增加一致。我们表明，通过量化体温调节成本使能量资源从维护、繁殖和迁移等重要生命过程中转移的程度，Niche Mapper 可以为亚致死油污效应提供有价值的见解。
