Discover, October 7 2010.
While the temperature effects of climate change are expected to be less dramatic in the equatorial regions, the cold-blooded tropical animals that live there may be in for a dramatic shock. A study published this week in Nature focused on these cold-blooded animals–including insects, amphibians, and lizards–whose body temperatures are not constant, but instead rise and fall with the temperature of their environment.
The researchers found that these creatures show great increases in their metabolism from slight changes in temperature; the metabolic increases were on the order of twice that of warm-blooded animals. Read More >