School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria 3800, Australia.
Centre for Behavioural and Immuno Ecology, Department of Zoology, St. John's College, Palayamkottai 627002, Tamil Nadu, India
Biol Open. 2021 Feb 17;10(2):bio053926. doi: 10.1242/bio.053926.
The postprandial blood glucose level is very high for the body size in frugivorous bats. Like other homeotherms, bats release heat during digestion of dietary macronutrients. Despite males and females of the same species exhibiting different foraging behaviour, empirical support for sex differences in blood glucose and body surface temperature in fruit bats is poor. Moreover, while flight affects postprandial metabolism, whether such effects are different in each sex of fruit bats is unclear. Here, we studied these questions in the fruit bat, We first assessed whether there are sex differences in the postprandial level of blood glucose and body surface temperature over time in rested bats. We then assessed whether flight affects outcomes of sex differences in both traits. We found that the estimated marginal means of both traits were generally higher in females than males, in rested bats. Notably, the sex difference in both traits was only significant at specific sampling time of the assay. Further, the trait means significantly differed between the sexes only in the rested, but not active, bats, meaning that signals of sex difference in metabolic traits eroded when bats were active. Taken together, our findings suggest that in , the sex specificity in the expression of metabolic traits is significantly dependent on physical activity.
杂食性蝙蝠的餐后血糖水平相对于其体型而言非常高。与其他恒温动物一样，蝙蝠在消化食物中的宏量营养素时会释放热量。尽管同种蝙蝠的雌雄个体表现出不同的觅食行为，但在果蝠的血糖和体表面温度方面，性别差异的实证支持仍然很少。此外，尽管飞行会影响餐后代谢，但在果蝠的不同性别中，这种影响是否不同尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了果蝠中的这些问题。我们首先评估了在休息状态下，雌雄个体的餐后血糖和体表面温度随时间的变化是否存在性别差异。然后，我们评估了飞行是否会影响这两个特征的性别差异的结果。我们发现，在休息状态下，雌性个体的这两个特征的估计边缘平均值通常高于雄性个体。值得注意的是，这两个特征的性别差异仅在特定的检测时间点才具有统计学意义。此外，这些特征在休息状态下的雌雄个体之间存在显著差异，但在活跃状态下的雌雄个体之间没有差异，这意味着当蝙蝠活跃时，代谢特征的性别差异信号会消失。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，在果蝠中，代谢特征的表达的性别特异性显著依赖于身体活动。
