Respiratory Physiology of Vertebrates: Life With and Without Oxygen

by Edited by Göran E. Nilsson

• ISBN13: 9780521703024
• ISBN10: 0521703026
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How do vertebrates get the oxygen they need, or even manage without it for shorter or longer periods of time? How do they sense oxygen, how do they take it up from water or air, and how do they transport it to their tissues? Respiratory system adaptations allow numerous vertebrates to thrive in extreme environments where oxygen availability is limited or where there is no oxygen at all. Written for students and researchers in comparative physiology, this authoritative summary of vertebrate respiratory physiology begins by exploring the fundamentals of oxygen sensing, uptake and transport in a textbook style. Subsequently, the reader is shown important examples of extreme respiratory performance, like diving and high altitude survival in mammals and birds, air breathing in fish, and those few vertebrates that can survive without any oxygen at all for several months, showing how evolution has solved the problem of life without oxygen.

Author Biography

Gran E. Nilsson is Professor of physiology at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway. He has worked in the field of comparative respiratory physiology and neurobiology for more than 20 years, and has contributed to over 150 scientific papers, books, and book chapters.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
General principles	p. 1
Introduction: why we need oxygen	p. 3
Sensing oxygen	p. 14
Oxygen uptake and transport in water breathers	p. 49
Oxygen uptake and transport in air breathers	p. 95
Special cases	p. 129
Adaptations to hypoxia in fishes	p. 131
Breathing air in water and in air: the air-breathing fishes	p. 174
Air breathers under water: diving mammals and birds	p. 222
Vertebrate life at high altitude	p. 265
Surviving without any oxygen	p. 300
Index	p. 329
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