Supercooling
Photo by Christian Oldham
Figure 1. Adapted from Packard and Packard, 2003.
| Home | Supercooling |
| Freeze Avoidance and Freeze Tolerance: An Overview | Supercooling is a strategy of freeze avoidance that involves body fluids maintaining a liquid state at temperatures below their freezing points. Species that employ supercooling rely on a variety of adaptations that act to lower the temperature of spontaneous crystallization of body fluids (Storey and Storey, 1996). These adaptations may involve the use of antifreeze proteins, cryoprotectant chemicals that bind water to prevent cellular fluid from being drawn outside cells and being crystallized, or other mechanisms of inducing partial dehydration (Storey and Storey, 1996). |
| Freeze Avoidance in Overwintering Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) Hatchlings |
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Photo by Christian Oldham |
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| Freeze Avoidance in Overwintering Blanding’s Turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) | Hatchling painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) that are allowed to acclimatize to cold temperatures may develop increased resistance to freezing by exposure to ice and greater supercooling ability, allowing individuals to overwinter in an unfrozen supercooled state, even when exposed to ice in natal nests (Packard and Packard, 2003). |
| Variation in Freeze Tolerance Between Species |
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| Freeze Tolerance in Overwintering Slider (Trachemys scripta) Hatchlings | |
| Freeze Tolerance in Overwintering Northern Map Turtle (Graptemys geographica) Hatchlings | Figure 1. Adapted from Packard and Packard, 2003. |
| Literature Cited | |
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| Contact | This website was created as a part of a class project in the Animal Physiology Class at Davidson College |