Basal Metabolic Rate and Energy Expenditure during Incubation in the Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans)

Abstract
Metabolic rates of incubating and non-incubating adult wandering albatrosses (D. exulans) were measured using the bird''s rate of O2 consumption. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) was 1755 kJ day-1 for birds of mean mass 8130 g. This is close to the BMR predicted for non-passerines of equivalent mass from allometric equations. Incubating female wandering albatrosses of mean mass 7930 g expended 2415 kJ day-1. This is 1.4 times BMR and is also higher than previous estimates for incubating wandering albatrosses based on their rates of mass loss. These differences may be due in part to stresses imposed on the incubating birds during measurement of O2 consumption or to errors in estimating the amount of fat that the birds oxidized during their incubation fast in studies where their energy expenditure was calculated from loss of mass.

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