Hibernation provides a means of escaping the metabolic challenges associated with seasonality, yet the ability of mammals to prolong or reenter seasonal dormancy in response to extreme weather events is unclear. Here, we show that Arctic ground squirrels in northern Alaska exhibited sex-dependent plasticity in the physiology and phenology of hibernation in response to a series of late spring snowstorms in 2013 that resulted in the latest snowmelt on record. Females and nonreproductive males responded to the >1-month delay in snowmelt by extending heterothermy or reentering hibernation after several days of euthermy, leading to a >2-week delay in reproduction compared to surrounding years. In contrast, reproductive males neither extended nor reentered hibernation, likely because seasonal gonadal growth and development and subsequent testosterone release prevents a return to torpor. Our findings reveal intriguing differences in responses of males and females to climatic stressors, which can generate a phenological mismatch between the sexes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 December 2017.
All research outputs
#10,246,769
of 34,411,289 outputs
Outputs from The American Naturalist
#1,767
of 4,584 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#114,736
of 359,102 outputs
Outputs of similar age from The American Naturalist
#25
of 37 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,411,289 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,584 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 359,102 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 37 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
