mesotherm

English

Etymology

meso- +‎ -therm

Noun

mesotherm (plural mesotherms)

  1. (zoology) An animal that adjusts its body to a metabolically favourable temperature using a context-dependent balance of internal metabolically-produced heat and external-environmentally derived heat.
    • 2016 January 16, “Gigantism and Its Implications for the History of Life”, in PLOS ONE‎, DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0146092:
      The large terrestrial and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic were likely mesotherms, which maintained high body temperatures by virtue of their large size and whose metabolism approached that of endotherms.

Anagrams
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.