Abstract
Fishes are among the most diverse group of animals on the planet and they have equally diverse locomotor activities. Supporting this locomotor activity is the demand for delivery by the microcirculation (capillaries) of substrates/removal of metabolites by diffusion. The design of the microvascular system reflects this extreme range of locomotor activity in fishes. Among active species, red muscle has an extremely high capillary density (CD), similar to that of the mammalian myocardium despite an order of magnitude lower oxygen consumption. At the other extreme, white muscle has among the lowest CD ever recorded. Although broadly similar to the microcirculation in other vertebrate groups, structural and physiological differences accommodate the low blood pressure and the range of thermal environments inhabited by fishes.
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