Abstract
ABSTRACTInterest in the measurement of metabolic rates is growing rapidly, because of the importance of metabolism in advancing our understanding of organismal physiology, behaviour, evolution and responses to environmental change. The study of metabolism in aquatic animals is undergoing an especially pronounced expansion, with more researchers utilising intermittent-flow respirometry as a research tool than ever before. Aquatic respirometry measures the rate of oxygen uptake as a proxy for metabolic rate, and the intermittent-flow technique has numerous strengths for use with aquatic animals, allowing metabolic rate to be repeatedly estimated on individual animals over several hours or days and during exposure to various conditions or stimuli. There are, however, no published guidelines for the reporting of methodological details when using this method. Here, we provide the first guidelines for reporting intermittent-flow respirometry methods, in the form of a checklist of criteria that we consider to be the minimum required for the interpretation, evaluation and replication of experiments using intermittent-flow respirometry. Furthermore, using a survey of the existing literature, we show that there has been incomplete and inconsistent reporting of methods for intermittent-flow respirometry over the past few decades. Use of the provided checklist of required criteria by researchers when publishing their work should increase consistency of the reporting of methods for studies that use intermittent-flow respirometry. With the steep increase in studies using intermittent-flow respirometry, now is the ideal time to standardise reporting of methods, so that – in the future – data can be properly assessed by other scientists and conservationists.
Highlights
Estimation of the metabolic rates of animals has been a core element of research in comparative physiology for decades (Kleiber, 1947; Rolfe and Brown, 1997)
Aquatic respirometry measures the rate of oxygen uptake as a proxy for metabolic rate, and the intermittent-flow technique has numerous strengths for use with aquatic animals, allowing metabolic rate to be repeatedly estimated on individual animals over several hours or days and during exposure to various conditions or stimuli
We suggest that intermittent-flow respirometry should be the method of choice whenever possible, elements of the checklist related to methodological details, measuring conditions and background respiration are relevant to the general use of other forms of respirometry to estimate metabolic rate in aquatic animals
Summary
Estimation of the metabolic rates of animals has been a core element of research in comparative physiology for decades (Kleiber, 1947; Rolfe and Brown, 1997). Using this technique can reveal when the undisturbed animal is potentially functioning at basal rates of metabolism, denoted as standard metabolic rate (SMR) for ectotherms (Box 1) or when it is performing some defined level of activity or type of behaviour, often referred to as routine metabolic rate (RMR, Box 1) This ability to track changes in oxygen uptake rate in real time is a major improvement over the technique of flow-through respirometry (Ultsch et al, 1980), where there is a continuous flow of water through a respirometry chamber and oxygen uptake is measured by comparing the difference in oxygen concentration at inflow and outflow. We believe that researchers using intermittent-flow respirometry would benefit from a standardised, publicly available checklist of details that should be included when describing their
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