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Joseph,
It seems that the concensus is that none of us fish people have thought
much about this question. You should look into the herpetology literature
where the physiological effects of basking have been extensively
studied. A common tool used is model organisms with the same size, shape,
and skin color, that sits on or off the substrate, the model has an
internal temperature probe, and is used to estimate actual body
temperature.
A recent paper compared temp records derived from these kinds of probes
with available off the shelf recording thermometers, and found little
differences. I am not sure if this implies that coincidentally the
available probes have similar characteristics to lizard models or if heat
transfer in basking lizards is primarily from contact with heated air
rather than exposure to sunlight. If it is the latter, and fish heat
transfer is analagous, I would think that the traditional approach to
measuring water temperature to infer body temperature is generally
applicable even to "basking" fish.
Thomas P. Hurst
Marine Sciences Research Center
State University of New York
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5000
631-632-8659 office
631-632-8709 lab
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