TEMPERATURE REGULATION

HOMEOSTASIS AND ALLOSTASIS

• Physiologist Walter B Cannon (1929) introduced the term homeostasis to refer to temperature
regulation and other biological processes that keep body variables within a xed range.

• Homeostatic processes in animals trigger physiological and behavioural activities that keep
certain variables within a set range.

• A set point is a single value that the body works to maintain.

• For e.g., if calcium is de cient in your diet and its concentration in the blood begins to fall below
the set point of 0.16 g/L, storage deposits in your bones release additional calcium into the
blood.

• If the calcium level in the blood rises above 0.16 g/L, we store part of the excess in our bones
and excrete the rest.

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• Similar mechanisms maintain constant blood levels of water, oxygen,

glucose, sodium chloride, protein, fat and acidity (Cannon, 1929).

• Processes that reduce discrepancies are known as negative feedback.

WHY HOMEOSTASIS IS NOT SATISFACTORY?

• The body does not maintain a complete constancy.

• E.g., our body temperature is about half a Celsius degree higher in mid-afternoon than
in the middle of the night.

• Most animals maintain a nearly constant body weight from day to day, but add body fat
in fall and decrease it in spring. (The increased fat is a good reserve in preparation for
probable food shortage during the winter. It also provides insulation against the cold.)

• Much of our behaviour anticipates a need before it occurs. E.g., as the air is starting to
warm up, a hiker increases thirst and decreases urine production by the kidneys,
anticipating probable sweating and dehydration.

ALLOSTASIS

• The term allostasis (Greek root s meaning “variable” & “standing”

respectively) which means the adaptive way in which the body
anticipates needs depending on the situation, avoiding errors than
just correcting them (Sterling, 2012).
CONTROLLING BODY TEMPERATURE

• An average young adult expends about 2600 kcal per day, where most of it goes to basal
metabolism, the energy used to perform basic life sustaining functions like maintaining a
constant body temperature, breathing etc. while at rest.

• We produce the amount of heat required to maintain body temperature largely by metabolism
in brown adipose cells, cells that are more like muscle cells than like while fat cells.

• They burn fuel as muscle cells do, but release it directly as heat instead of muscle contractions.

• White adipose tissue is critical for energy storage, endocrine communication, and insulin
sensitivity. Brown fat (brown adipose tissue) is a type of body fat that regulates your body
temperature in cold conditions.

• Amphibians, reptiles and most sh are ectothermic (poikilothermic; Greek meaning-

“varied heat”), meaning that they depend on external resources for body heat instead of
generating it themselves.

• An ectothermic animal’s body temperature is nearly the same as the temperature of it’s
environment.

• Poikilothermic animals lack physiological mechanisms of temperature regulation such as

shivering or sweating, but they can regulate their body temperature behaviourally.

• A desert lizard moves between sunny areas, shady areas, and burrows to maintain a fairly
steady body temperature.

• However, behavioural methods do not enable animals to maintain the same degree of
constancy that mammals and birds have.

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• Exceptions: A few large sh, including sharks and tuna, maintain their
core body temperature well above that of the surrounding water
most of the time (Bernal, Donley, Chadwick, & Some, 2005).

• The tegu lizards of South America, about the size of a large rabbit,
increase their metabolism during the mating season, raising their
body temperature to sometimes 10 degree Celcius above that of the
environment (Tattersall et al., 2016).
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• Mammals and birds are endothermic (homeothermic; Greet meaning- “same heat”),
meaning that they generate enough body heat to remain signi cantly above the
temperature of the environment.

• Endothermic animals use physiological mechanisms to keep their core temperature

nearly constant.

• Endothermy is costly, especially for small animals. An animal generates heat in

proportion to its total mass, but it radiates heat in proportion of its total surface area.

• A small mammal or bird has a high surface-to-volume ratio and therefore radiates heat
rapidly. Such animals need much fuel each day to maintain their body temperature.

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• To cool ourselves, when the air is warmer than body temperature, humans sweat to
expose water for evaporation.

• For species that don’t sweat, the alternatives are licking themselves and panting. As
water evaporates, it cools the body.

• However, if the air is humid and hot, the moisture des not evaporate.

• One endangers their health if they cannot drink enough to replace the water they lose
by sweating.

• If we sweat without drinking, we become dehydrated. We then protect our body water
by sweating less, despite the risk of overheating (Tokizawa et al., 2010).

 • In cold weather, any muscle contractions such as those of shivering generate heat.

• Decreased blood low to the skin prevents cooling too much. The consequence is
warm internal organs but cold skin.

• A third mechanism works well for most mammals, though not humans: when cold,
they uff out their fur to increase insulation.

• Though humans have goose bumps, but this mechanism was more useful when our
remote ancestors had fuller coat of fur.

• We also use behavioural mechanisms just as ectothermic animals do. The more we
regulate our temperature behaviourally, the less energy we need to spend
physiologically (Re netti & Carlisle, 1986).
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• Finding a cool place on a hot day is much bette that sweating.

• Finding a warm place on a cool day is smarter than shivering.

• Put on more clothes or take it off.

• Becoming more active to get warmer or less active to avoid

overheating.

• To get warm, huddle with others.

SURVIVING THE EXTREME COLD

• If the atmospheric temperature drops below 0 degree Celsius, an ectothermic

animal becomes vulnerable.

• If its body temperature drops below the freezing point of water, ice crystals form.
Because water expands when it freezes, ice crystals would tear apart blood vessels
and cell membranes, killing the animal.

• Many amphibians and reptiles avoid the risk by burrowing or nding other shelter
locations.

• Some insects and sh stock their blood with glycerol and other antifreeze
chemicals at the start of the winter (Liou et al., 2000).

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• Wood frogs do freeze but they have several mechanisms to reduce the
damage.

• They start by withdrawing most uids from their organs and blood vessels
and storing it in extracellular spaces. Therefore, icy crystals have room to
expand when they form, without tearing blood vessels or cells.

• Also, the frogs have ice crystals to form gradually, not in chunks.

• Finally, they have extraordinary blood-clotting capacity that quickly repairs

any blood vessels that do rupture (Storey & Storey, 1999).

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 ADVANTAGES OF HIGH CONSTANT BODY

TEMPERATURE
• As the water gets colder, a sh recruits more and more fast twitch muscle bres to remain
active, despite the risk of rapid fatigue.

• Birds and mammals keep their bodies warm at all times, therefore stay constantly ready
for vigorous activity regardless of the temperature of the air.

• However, on a cold day, you divert blood away from the periphery to protect the internal
organs and to avoid losing too much heat to the surrounding air. The result is that your
muscles are not quite as warm as usual. An athlete needs to warm up to increase the
muscle’s temperature on a cold day.

• A warmer animal has warmer muscles and therefore runs faster with less fatigue than a
cooler animal.
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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF BODY TEMPERATURE
INCREASES THAN 37 DEGREE CELSIUS?

• First, maintaining a higher temperature requires more fuel and energy.

• Second, beyond about 40° or 41° C, proteins begin to break their bonds and lose their useful
properties.

• It is possible to evolve proteins that are stable at higher temperatures; indeed, odd microscopic
animals called thermophiles survive in boiling water. However, to do so, they need many extra
chemical bonds to stabilize their proteins.

• The enzymatic properties of a protein depend on its exibility, so making proteins rigid enough to
withstand high temperatures makes them inactive at more moderate temperatures (Feller, 2010).

• In short, our body temperature of 37° C is a trade-off between the advantages of high temperature
for rapid movement and the disadvantages of high temperature for protein stability.

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• Reproductive cells require a cooler environment than the rest of the body (Rommel, Pabst, &
McLellan, 1998).

• Birds lay eggs and sit on them, instead of developing them internally, because the birds’ internal
temperature is too hot for an embryo.

• Similarly, in most male mammals, the scrotum hangs outside the body, because sperm
production requires a cooler temperature than the rest of the body.

• A man who wears his undershorts too tight keeps his testes too close to the body, overheats
them, and produces fewer healthy sperm cells.

• Pregnant women are advised to avoid hot baths and anything else that might overheat a
developing fetus.

BRAIN MECHANISMS

• The physiological changes that defend body temperature—such as shivering, sweating, and
changes in blood ow to the skin— depend on areas in and near the hypothalamus, mainly
the anterior hypothalamus and the pre-optic area, which is just anterior to the anterior
hypothalamus. (It is called preoptic because it is near the optic chiasm, where the optic
nerves cross.)

• Because of the close relationship between the preoptic area and the anterior hypothalamus,
researchers often treat them as a single area, the pre-optic area/anterior hypothalamus, or
POA/AH.

• The POA/AH and a couple other hypothalamic areas send output to the hindbrain’s raphe
nucleus, which controls the physiological mechanisms (Yoshida, Li, Cano, Lazarus, & Saper,
2009).

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 • The POA/AH monitors body temperature partly by monitoring its own temperature (D. O.
Nelson & Prosser, 1981). If an experimenter heats the POA/AH, an animal pants or sweats, even
in a cool environment. If the same brain area is cooled, the animal shivers, even in a warm
room.

• Given that the hypothalamus is well insulated on the interior of the head, this mechanism
makes sense. If the hypothalamus is hot or cold, the rest of the interior of the body probably is,
too.

• Cells of the POA/AH also receive input from temperature receptors in the skin and spinal cord.

• The animal shivers most vigorously when both the POA/AH and the other receptors are cold. It
sweats or pants most vigorously when both are hot.

• Separate populations of cells within the POA/AH and a couple other

hypothalamic areas regulate different aspects of temperature regulation, such
as shivering and changes in blood ow.

• Therefore, tiny localized damage can impair one aspect of temperature

regulation and not others (McAllen, Tanaka, Ootsuka, & McKinley, 2010).

• After damage to all of the POA/AH, mammals can still regulate body
temperature but only by the same behavioral mechanisms that a lizard might
use, such as seeking a warmer or colder location (Satinoff & Rutstein, 1970;
Van Zoeren & Stricker, 1977).
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FEVER
• Bacterial and viral infections generally cause fever, an increase in body temperature.
The fever is not part of the illness; it is part of the body’s defense against the illness.

• When bacteria, viruses, fungi, or other intruders invade the body, they mobilize
leukocytes (white blood cells) to attack them.

• The leukocytes release small proteins called cytokines that attack the intruders.

• Cytokines also stimulate the vagus nerve, which sends signals to the hypothalamus (Ek
et al., 2001; Leon, 2002), increasing the release of chemicals called prostaglandins.

• Stimulation of a particular kind of prostaglandin receptor in one nucleus of the

hypothalamus (posterior hypothalamic nucleus) is necessary for fever. If you didn’t
have those receptors, illnesses would not give you a fever (Lazarus et al., 2007).

• A fever represents an increased set point for body temperature.

• Just as you shiver or sweat when your body temperature goes below
or above its usual 37° C, when you have a fever of, say, 39° C, you
shiver or sweat whenever your temperature deviates from that level.

• Moving to a cooler room does not lower your fever.

• Your body just works harder to keep its temperature at the feverish
level.

• Fever is something the animal does to ght an infection.

• Because newborn rabbits have an immature hypothalamus, they do not

shiver in response to infections.

• If they are given a choice of environments, however, they select a spot warm
enough to raise their body temperature (Satinoff, McEwen, & Williams, 1976).

• That is, they develop a fever by behavioral means. Fish and reptiles with an
infection also choose a warm enough environment, if they can nd one, to
produce a feverish body temperature (Kluger, 1991).

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DOES FEVER DO ANY GOOD?

• Certain types of bacteria grow less vigorously at high temperatures than at

normal mammalian body temperatures.

• Also, fever enhances activity of the immune system (Skitzki, Chen, Wang, &
Evans, 2007).

• Other things being equal, developing a moderate fever probably increases an

individual’s chance of surviving a bacterial infection (Kluger, 1991).

• However, a fever above about 39° C (103° F) in humans does more harm than
good, and a fever above 41° C (109° F) is life-threatening (Rommel et al., 1998).