Meeting Abstract
Many animals reside in burrows that serve as refuges from predators and from adverse environmental conditions. Because burrows are integral parts of the lives of fossorial and semi-fossorial animals, they can be construed as extensions of the organism’s own physiology (sensu Turner 2000). Little is known about how the sequestered burrow environment meets the physiological needs of its occupant(s). Scorpio palmatus burrows are tortuous, with at least two bends, and have a horizontal entrance platform near the ground surface. We hypothesized that the burrow acts as an extension of the animal’s physiology, with the burrow architecture regulating air flow and temperature fluxes between the occupant and the ambient environment. We found that entrance size, not burrow tortuosity, affects burrow ventilation, the smaller the entrance diameter, the less the ventilation. S. palmatus dug wider tunneled, more tortuous burrows in dry soils compared to those dug in wet and semi-dry soil. Also, S. palmatus can apparently influence their internal body temperature by tracking temperature gradients within their burrows. We tracked scorpion behavior with infrared video and PIT tags and found that a platform just after the burrow entrance provided a place to spend much of the night and day, with scorpions spending more time on the platform during the day than predicted. Overall, we found that S. palmatus modifies its behavior and burrow structure in response to the physical environment.
