Kleptothermy
[2] The purpose of this behaviour is to enable these groups to increase its thermal inertia, retard heat loss and/or reduce the per capita metabolic expenditure needed to maintain stable body temperatures.
[2] In this case, the endotherms involved are not only mammals and birds; they can be termites that maintain high and constant temperatures within their mounds where they provide thermal regimes that are exploited by a wide array of lizards, snakes and crocodilians.
[citation needed] However, many cases of kleptothermy involve ectotherms sheltering inside the burrows used by endotherms to help maintain a high constant body temperature.
[11] In turn, those males that mimic females become rapidly revitalized after hibernation (which depends upon raising their body temperature), giving them an advantage in their own attempts to mate.
[11] On the other hand, huddling allows emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) to save energy, maintain a high body temperature and sustain their breeding fast during the Antarctic winter.
[12] Therefore, this complex social behaviour is what enables all breeders to get an equal and normal access to an environment which allows them to save energy and successfully incubate their eggs during the Antarctic winter.
[14][15] Research has shown such kleptothermy can be advantageous in cases such as the blue-lipped sea krait (Laticauda laticaudata), where these reptiles occupy a burrow of a pair of wedge-tailed shearwater incubating their chick.
[16] Research has shown that fairy prions enable tuatara to maintain a higher body temperature through the night for several months of the year, October to January (austral spring to summer).
[16] Research done on embryos of Chinese softshell turtles (Pelodiscus sinensis) falsify the assumption that behavioural thermoregulation is possible only for post-hatching stages of the reptile life history.
[18] Thus, the heterothermy of these endotherms would lead to losses of performance during certain periods and therefore genetic variation in thermosensitivity would enable the evolution of thermal generalists in more heterothermic species.
[19] These mechanisms were more likely quantitative rather than qualitative and it involved selection of appropriate habitats, changes in levels of locomotor activity, optimum energy liberation, and conservation of metabolic substrates.
