Cardiac output, ventral and dorsal aortic blood pressure, heart rate, and coeliac and mesenteric artery blood flow were recorded simultaneously in the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua L., at rest, during exercise, during hypoxia and after feeding. In the resting unfed animals, coeliac artery blood flow was 4.1 +/− 0.8 ml min-1 kg-1 and mesenteric artery blood flow was 3.5 +/− 1.1 ml min-1 kg-1 (mean +/− S.E.M., N = 10); together, these flows represent approximately 40% of the cardiac output. Exercise or exposure to hypoxia resulted in increased visceral vascular resistance, leading to reductions in the coeliac and mesenteric artery blood flows. Coeliac and mesenteric blood flows were increased 24 h after feeding and the coeliac and systemic vascular resistances decreased in comparison with the prefeeding values. Phentolamine did not affect the gastrointestinal artery blood flow, but produced a significant decrease in the mesenteric and systemic vascular resistance. Treatment with bretylium and phentolamine revealed differences between the coeliac and the mesenteric vasculature regarding the control mechanisms during hypoxia and during exercise and feeding. During hypoxia, an adrenergic control of the gastrointestinal vasculature with both nervous and humoral components was found, whereas during exercise and after feeding an additional non-adrenergic mechanism controlling gut blood flow was demonstrated.
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz
Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology
Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.
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