Insect Respiration
MexicoDoug at aol.com
MexicoDoug at aol.com
Sat Jan 25 20:13:32 EST 2003
This is an interesting article by authors at the Field Museum adds some new
information to the theme we discussed at least twice in the last year or two:
How do insects breathe?
Best wishes
Doug Dawn
Tracheal Respiration in Insects Visualized with Synchrotron X-ray Imaging
Mark W. Westneat,*1 Oliver Betz,12 Richard W. Blob,13 Kamel Fezzaa,4 W. James
Cooper,15 Wah-Keat Lee4 Insects are known to exchange respiratory gases in
their system of tracheal tubes by using either diffusion or changes in
internal pressure that are produced through body motion or hemolymph
circulation. However, the inability to see inside living insects has limited
our understanding of their respiration mechanisms. We used a synchrotron beam
to obtain x-ray videos of living, breathing insects. Beetles, crickets, and
ants exhibited rapid cycles of tracheal compression and expansion in the head
and thorax. Body movements and hemolymph circulation cannot account for these
cycles; therefore, our observations demonstrate a previously unknown
mechanism of respiration in insects analogous to the inflation and deflation
of vertebrate lungs.
1 Department of Zoology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605,
USA.
2 Department of Zoology, University of Kiel, Germany.
3 Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634,
USA.
4 Experimental Facilities Division, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National
Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
5 Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: <A HREF="mailto:mwestneat at fieldmuseum.org">
mwestneat at fieldmuseum.org</A>
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