New Research Discovers Insights into the Behaviour of Salt Water Crocodiles
9 September 2008
Work by Tonia Schwartz, Shauna Murray and Frank Seebacher has led to insights as to how salt water crocodiles manage the trade-off between the benefits of metabolic augmentation during cold acclimation and the oxidation damage this incurs. The research, published early this year in Proc. R. Soc. B and recently reviewed in J. Exp. Biol., provides the first evidence of UCP genes - which have a role in oxidation protection - in a reptile and demonstrates that UCP genes are upregulated during cold acclimation.