In Ireland, bats and hedgehogs are they only mammals that undergo true hibernation as the weather has warmed up they’ve woken up from their winter lie-in. Most people think of frogs as aquatic creatures but, in fact, they spend most of their lives on land, only returning to the water in order to breed which is exactly what they’re doing in southern parts of our island at this time.
These amphibians hibernate beneath compost heaps, under stones and logs or buried in the mud at the bottom of a pond where they survive by extracting oxygen from the water through their skin. Although they’re cold-blooded animals they have metabolic adaptations to prevent them from freezing solid at sub-zero temperatures.
The prolonged, deep sleep of hibernation is the key winter survival strategy for many animals and insects are no different. In order to survive winter, insects push the pause button actually the ‘diapause’ button prompting an inactive state, not unlike hibernation. It’s usually triggered by cues from their environment, like shorter days, fallen temperatures, or scarce food availability.
During diapause, an insect's metabolic rate drops to one-tenth or less so it can use stored body fat to survive these cold and difficult months. Julie Reynolds, a comparative physiologist at the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University joins us tonight and discusses this topic with Entomologist Éanna Ní Lamhna.
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