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An ectotherm (from the Greek ἐκτός (ektós) "outside" and θερμός (thermós) "heat"), more commonly referred to as a "cold-blooded animal", [1] is an animal in which internal physiological sources of heat, such as blood, are of relatively small or of quite negligible importance in controlling body temperature. [2]
The pre-flight warm-up behavior of a moth. Insect thermoregulation is the process whereby insects maintain body temperatures within certain boundaries.Insects have traditionally been considered as poikilotherms (animals in which body temperature is variable and dependent on ambient temperature) as opposed to being homeothermic (animals that maintain a stable internal body temperature ...
As a consequence they also need higher food intake rates, which may limit abundance of endotherms more than ectotherms. Because ectotherms depend on environmental conditions for body temperature regulation, they typically are more sluggish at night and in the morning when they emerge from their shelters to heat up in the first sunlight.
Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation.
A few decades later, Atkinson (1994) performed a similar review of temperature effects on body size in ectotherms. His study, which included 92 species of ectotherms ranging from animals and plants to protists and bacteria, concluded that a reduction in temperature resulted in an increase in organism size in 83.5% of cases.
Simplified control circuit of human thermoregulation. [8]The core temperature of a human is regulated and stabilized primarily by the hypothalamus, a region of the brain linking the endocrine system to the nervous system, [9] and more specifically by the anterior hypothalamic nucleus and the adjacent preoptic area regions of the hypothalamus.
In general, warm-bloodedness refers to three separate categories of thermoregulation.. Endothermy [a] is the ability of some creatures to control their body temperatures through internal means such as muscle shivering or increasing their metabolism.
Different species have different temperatures of their thermal neutral zones. In dogs, the thermoneutral zone ranges from 20–30 °C (68–86 °F). [9] Domestic cats have a considerably higher thermoneutral zone, ranging between 30 and 38 °C.