Hypoxia alters the thermogenic response to cold in adult homeothermic and heterothermic rodents
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Key points For small mammals living in a cold, hypoxic environment, supplying enough O2 to sustain thermogenesis can be challenging. While heterothermic mammals are generally more tolerant of cold and hypoxia than homeothermic mammals, how they regulate O2 supply and demand during progressive cooling in hypoxia is largely unknown. We show that as ambient temperature is reduced in hypoxia, body temperature falls in both homeotherms and heterotherms. In the homeothermic rat, a decrease in O2 consumption rate and lung O2 extraction accompany this fall in body temperature, despite a relative hyperventilation. Paradoxically, in heterothermic mice, hamsters and ground squirrels, body temperature decreases more than in the homeothermic rat, even though they maintain ventilation, increase lung O2 extraction and maintain or elevate their O2 consumption rates. Variation in cold and hypoxia tolerance among homeotherms and heterotherms reflects divergent strategies in how O2 supply and demand are regulated under thermal and hypoxic challenges. Abstract Compared to homeothermic mammals, heterothermic mammals are reported to be exceptionally tolerant of cold and hypoxia. We hypothesised that this variation in tolerance stems from divergent strategies in how homeotherms and heterotherms regulate O2 supply versus O2 demand when exposed to hypoxia during progressive cooling. To test this hypothesis, we exposed adult rodents ranging in their degree of heterothermic expression (homeotherm: rats, facultative heterotherms: mice and hamsters, and obligate heterotherm: ground squirrels) to either normoxia (21% O2) or environmental hypoxia (7% O2), while reducing ambient temperature from 38 to 5°C. We found that when ambient temperature was reduced in normoxia, all species increased their O2 consumption rate and ventilation in parallel, maintaining a constant ventilatory equivalent and level of lung O2 extraction. Surprisingly, body temperature fell in all species, significantly so in the heterotherms. When ambient temperature was reduced in hypoxia, however, the homeothermic rat decreased their O2 consumption rate and lung O2 extraction despite an increase in their ventilatory equivalent, indicative of a relative hyperventilation. Heterotherms (mice, hamsters and ground squirrels), on the other hand, decreased their ventilatory equivalent, but increased lung O2 extraction and maintained or elevated their O2 consumption rates, yet their body temperature fell even more than in the rat. These results are consistent with the idea that homeotherms and heterotherms diverge in the strategies they use to match O2 supply and O2 demand, and that enhanced cold and hypoxia tolerance in heterotherms may stem from an improved ability to extract O2 from the inspired air.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".