Recent work in Australia and Africa has shown that heterothermy is widespread among phylogenetically diverse tropical and subtropical mammalian taxa. However, data on the use of heterothermy by Neotropical mammals are relatively scant, and those studies that exist focus on insect‐eating bats. We investigated the capacity of fruit‐eating Neotropical bats to use heterothermy when exposed to acute cold temperatures, and compared this to previous data focused on insect‐eating bats sampled from the same region and time of year. We measured rectal temperatures prior to acute cold exposure (1 hr at an air temperature of 6, 7, or 10°C), and again after exposure. Our data show considerable variation in the thermoregulatory patterns of Neotropical bats, and generally, our results show that smaller bats cool quicker and to a greater extent than larger bats. Our results highlight the importance of energy conservation even in environments in which resources are relatively abundant.

中文翻译：

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体重影响新热带蝙蝠的短期异源热

澳大利亚和非洲的最新工作表明，异种热在系统发育多样的热带和亚热带哺乳动物类群中很普遍。但是，关于新热带哺乳动物使用异源热疗的数据相对较少，现有的研究集中在食虫蝙蝠。我们调查了吃水果的新热带蝙蝠在暴露于急性低温时使用异温热的能力，并将其与以前的数据进行了比较，后者以前的数据侧重于从同一地区和一年中的同一时间采样的食虫蝙蝠。我们在急性冷暴露之前（在6、7或10°C的空气温度下1小时）以及暴露后再次测量直肠温度。我们的数据表明，新热带蝙蝠的温度调节模式有相当大的差异，通常，我们的结果表明，较小的蝙蝠比较大的蝙蝠冷却得更快，而且冷却程度更大。