calculate_E_blouin {ectotemp}

Thermoregulation effectiveness sensu Blouin-Demers & Weatherhead

Description

This function calculates an often-used variant of the original formula to determine effectiveness of temperature regulation of Hertz et al. (1993). The concerning variant was proposed by Blouin-Demers & Weatherhead (2001), who argued that interpretation of the formula of Hertz et al. (1993) is confounded by the fact that different combinations of the mean thermal quality of the habitat (de) and mean accuracy of temperature regulation (db) might lead to similar E values. As such, Blouin-Demers & Weatherhead (2001) proposed use of E = de - db, which quantifies the extent of departure from perfect thermoconformity. Positive E values indicate active temperature regulation, negative values represent active avoidance of suitable thermal habitat, and values around 0 suggest thermoconformity. The thermal quality of the habitat (de) and accuracy of temperature regulation (db) are calculated as part of this formula, so it is not necessary to run calculate_de and calculate_db before running this function.

Usage

calculate_E_blouin(te, tb, tset_low, tset_up)

Arguments

te

A vector containing operative temperatures.

tb

A vector containing body temperature measurements.

tset_low

Lower boundary of a species or population set-point range that was determined through thermal preference trials in a temperature gradient. This may be a named double vector containing the lower boundary value, or simply the value itself.

tset_up

Upper boundary of the set-point range.

Value

Effectiveness of temperature regulation (E) sensu Blouin-Demers and Weatherhead (2001).

References

Blouin-Demers, G., & Weatherhead, P. J. (2001). Thermal ecology of black rat snakes (Elaphe obsoleta) in a thermally challenging environment. Ecology, 82 (11), 3025-3043.

See Also

calculate_E_hertz.

Examples

te <- na.omit(bufbuf[,"te"])
tb <- na.omit(bufbuf[,"tb"])
E <- calculate_E_blouin(te, tb, 19.35, 26.44)