Variations in the relationship between oxygen consumption, body size and summated tissue metabolism in the winkleLittorina littorea

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONA considerable amount of data now exists on the relationship between metabolism and body size in a wide range of organisms from bacteria and protozoans through to large mammals. Much of this information has been reviewed by Kleiber (1932, 1947), Brody and Procter (1932), Brody (1945), Zeuthen (1947, 1953), Hemmingsen (1950, i960) and Bertalanffy (1957). In general the metabolism has been shown to be proportional to a fractional power of the body weight thus eggs, the larger metazoan poikilotherms and even homoiotherms is proportional to a constant power of the body weight. This factor has been shown to be 0.751 ± 0.015 by Hemmingsen (i960). Superimposed upon this general relationship are variations according to the weight range of the organisms concerned. Thus both Zeuthen (1953) and Hemmingsen (i960) have shown that the value of the constant b for unicellular organisms is approximately 0.7 (Zeuthen, 1953) or 0.751 (Hemmingsen, 1960), whilst that for small metazoans is 0.95 (Zeuthen, 1953) or 1.0 (Hemmingsen, 1960). Finally, the slope of the line relating the metabolism to body size in larger metazoans is 075 (Zeuthen, 1953) or 0.751 (Hemmingsen, 1960). That is, the value for b — 1 in equation (2) is likely to be between -0.3 and -0.249 in unicellular organisms; 0 and -0.05 in small metazoans and approximately -0.249 in larger metazoans.Despite this apparently fundamental relationship between metabolism and body size, there are many instances where for a particular species the relationship may not apply. Indeed in some species the metabolism may vary in its relationship to body weight according to conditions such as salinity, shore level, experimental temperature and acclimation temperature.

Shell wiping in Calliostoma zizyphinum: the use of pedal mucus as a provendering agent and its contribution to daily energetic requirements

“…This is of the same order of magnitude as values recorded in the literature for the metabolic rates of Nucella lapillus (Bayne & Scullard 1978), Littorina littorea (Sandeen et al 1954, Newell & Pye 1971 and Haliotis tuberculata (Peck et al 1987) (see also Bayne &Newell 1983 andGraham 1994 for reviews). It should be noted that the metabolic values obtained here represent a mean metabolic rate for individuals that were both active and stationary.…”

Physiology and lipid metabolism of Littorina saxatilis infected with trematodes

“…In a separate equation calculated for infected individuals, the slope of regression was 0.98, which means that the relationship between respiration rate and mass in infected L. saxatilis is close to linear. In contrast to what was mentioned above for L. littorea (Newell & Pye 1971), the specific oxygen consumption rate did not depend on mass in L. saxatilis, because rates remained constant over all infected snail sizes investigated. (Fig.3).…”

Rediscovering and Reviving Old Observations and Explanations of Metabolic Scaling in Living Systems

“…Recent investigators have implicated membrane composition and function [89,167,179,234], mitochondrial activity and number [97,179,[235][236][237], intracellular transport costs [130], DNA content [182,190], and other biochemical factors [238], as importantly involved in the intrinsic cellular control of metabolic scaling. Evidence for and against various specific aspects of this approach can be found in [19,20,89,[91][92][93][94]130,167,169,[235][236][237][238][239][240][241][242][243]. A major limitation of the cell-based RD approach is that it cannot explain by itself why the hypometric scaling of cellular metabolic rate is lost in cells cultured in vivo (reviewed in [20,97]).…”