Browsing by Author "Catalan, Tamara P."

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    Acclimation to daily thermal variability drives the metabolic performance curve
    (2013) Bozinovic, Francisco; Catalan, Tamara P.; Estay, Sergio A.; Sabat, Pablo
    Background: Among the predictions of the effect of future climate change, the impact of thermal conditions at local levels on the physiological performance of individuals and their acclimation capacities is key to understanding animals' responses to global warming.
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    Immunological vulnerability and adjustments to environmental thermal variability
    (2013) Bozinovic, Francisco; Catalan, Tamara P.; Kalergis, Alexis M.
    Ecological physiologists recognize the potential impacts of temperature on physiological traits, however less attention has been paid to changes in thermal variation on a scale that pertains directly to living organisms. Also, few studies have examined the effects of temperature variation or other climatic drivers on host-pathogen interactions. We evaluated the effect of acclimation to ambient temperature variability (0, 4 and 8 degrees C daily variability) on the immune performance in the insect Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera). We observed that antibacterial activity differed significantly between treatments. In addition, variances of antibacterial activity were larger under the more variable thermal conditions. Similarly to antibacterial responses, tyrosinase phenoloxidase activity was higher in animals living in the most variable thermal condition. We hypothesized that a stress-associated mechanism may affect negatively the constitutive immune activity in T molitor It is well known that acute stress can cause in insects a transient impairment in the resistance to bacterial infection. This increase in susceptibility to diseases is mediated, at least in part, by the release of neuro-hormones in response to stress.
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    Pathogen- and diet-dependent foraging, nutritional and immune ecology in mealworms
    (2011) Catalan, Tamara P.; Barcelo, Matias; Niemeyer, Hermann M.; Kalergis, Alexis M.; Bozinovic, Francisco
    Background: Feeding habits and dietary nutritional content may play a key role in pathogen-dependent foraging ecology, because mounting an effective immune response is costly for the host.