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Link to original content: http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30679474/
Terrestrial locomotion energy costs vary considerably between species: no evidence that this is explained by rate of leg force production or ecology - PubMed Skip to main page content
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. 2019 Jan 24;9(1):656.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-36565-z.

Terrestrial locomotion energy costs vary considerably between species: no evidence that this is explained by rate of leg force production or ecology

Lewis G Halsey  1 , Craig R White  2
Affiliations

Terrestrial locomotion energy costs vary considerably between species: no evidence that this is explained by rate of leg force production or ecology

Lewis G Halsey et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Inter-specifically, relative energy costs of terrestrial transport vary several-fold. Many pair-wise differences of locomotor costs between similarly-sized species are considerable, and are yet to be explained by morphology or gait kinematics. Foot contact time, a proxy for rate of force production, is a strong predictor of locomotor energy costs across species of different size and might predict variability between similarly sized species. We tested for a relationship between foot contact time and metabolic rate during locomotion from published data. We investigated the phylogenetic correlation between energy expenditure rate and foot contact time, conditioned on fixed effects of mass and speed. Foot contact time does not explain variance in rate of energy expenditure during locomotion, once speed and body size are accounted for. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, inter-specific differences in the mass-independent net cost of terrestrial transport (NCOT) are not explained by rates of force production. We also tested for relationships between locomotor energy costs and eco-physiological variables. NCOT did not relate to any of the tested eco-physiological variables; we thus conclude either that interspecific differences in transport cost have no influence on macroecological and macrophysiological patterns, or that NCOT is a poor indicator of animal energy expenditure beyond the treadmill.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
An inter-specific regression of the residuals of log(effective limb length) on log(mass) against the residuals of log(1/contact time [tc]) on log(mass) and log(speed) from the dataset of the present study returned R2 = 0.61 (r = −0.78, N = 13). Data for effective limb length are from Pontzer and Halsey; data for contact time are provided online (Supplementary).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relationships between (A) inverse of foot contact time and (B) rate of oxygen consumption, against locomotion speed. Each line in each panel represents an individual data set for a distinct species (N = 21), which are coloured by body mass from small (blue) to large (orange). Note that data are shown on log-transformed axes. The data set includes a total of 414 observations, and all data are provided in the online information.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Relationships between log10(V˙O2) and log(1/contact time [tc]), accounting for (A) log10(mass), (B) log10(speed), and (C) both log10(mass) and log10(speed). V˙O2 has units of ml kg−1 min−1 and tc has units of s. Each point is the best linear unbiased predictor (BLUP) for the random effect of phylogeny for each species (N = 21), shown ±SE, which provides shrunken estimates of the differences between terms and the overall means. The BLUP values are used for visualisation, and quantify the phylogenetic component of each species’ deviation from the overall means; a positive relationship between the BLUPs for log10(V˙O2) and log10(1/tc) indicates that, once the fixed effects are accounted for, species that evolve a high log10(V˙O2) also evolve a high log10(1/tc), and vice versa. The choice of x and y axes for these visualisations is arbitrary. The phylogenetic correlations in panels (A) and (B) are significant (r = 0.87 and 0.64, respectively, P ≤ 0.002), the correlation in panel (C) is not (r = −0.02, P = 0.95).
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