Fruit bats (Pteropodidae) fuel their metabolism rapidly and directly with exogenous sugars

The Journal of Experimental Biology
O AmitaiC C Voigt

Abstract

Previous studies reported that fed bats and birds mostly use recently acquired exogenous nutrients as fuel for flight, rather than endogenous fuels, such as lipids or glycogen. However, this pattern of fuel use may be a simple size-related phenomenon because, to date, only small birds and bats have been studied with respect to the origin of metabolized fuel, and because small animals carry relatively small energy reserves, considering their high mass-specific metabolic rate. We hypothesized that approximately 150 g Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus Pteropodidae), which are more than an order of magnitude heavier than previously studied bats, also catabolize dietary sugars directly and exclusively to fuel both rest and flight metabolism. We based our expectation on the observation that these animals rapidly transport ingested dietary sugars, which are absorbed via passive paracellular pathways in the intestine, to organs of high energy demand. We used the stable carbon isotope ratio in exhaled CO(2) (delta(13)C(breath)) to assess the origin of metabolized substrates in 16 Egyptian fruit bats that were maintained on a diet of C3 plants before experiments. First, we predicted that in resting bats delta(13)C(breath) remain...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jul 18, 2014·Journal of Comparative Physiology. B, Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology·Kenneth C Welch, Chris C W Chen
Dec 20, 2011·Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology. Part A, Molecular & Integrative Physiology·Colleen T DownsPreshnee Singh
Dec 15, 2015·Journal of Comparative Physiology. B, Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology·Marshall D McCue, Kenneth C Welch
Mar 31, 2015·Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences·Kenneth C WelchMarshall D McCue
Nov 7, 2019·Journal of Comparative Physiology. B, Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology·Xingwen PengLibiao Zhang
Jun 20, 2021·Molecular Ecology·Diana D Moreno SantillánLiliana M Dávalos

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