Abstract
Metabolism is the fundamental process dictating material and energy fluxes through organisms. Several studies have suggested that resting metabolic scaling in various aquatic invertebrates is positively correlated with changes in body shape and the scaling of body surface area, which agrees with the surface area theory, but contradicts the negative correlations predicted by the resource–transport network theory. However, the relationship between resting metabolic scaling and respiration area, particularly in asymmetric fish that have undergone dramatically rapid metamorphosis, remains unclear. In this morphometric study in an asymmetric fish species (Paralichthys olivaceus), I compared my results with previous reports on resting metabolic scaling. I measured the respiratory area of P. olivaceus specimens aged 11–94 days (body weight, 0.00095–1.30000 g, respectively) to determine whether and how the resting metabolic scaling is associated with changes in body shape and respiratory area. Resting metabolic scaling might be more closely related to body surface area, because their slopes exactly corresponded with each other, than to respiratory area. Furthermore, confirming the surface area theory, it was linked to changes in body shape, but not from the resource–transport network theory. These findings provide new insights into the scaling mechanisms of area in relation to metabolism in asymmetric fish.
Highlights
In many organisms, oxygen consumption is considered a reflection of metabolism, which is the fundamental process by which food is changed into energy
The slopes for total cutaneous area, body surface area, and total length in the first to second phases decreased with increasing body mass, whereas the slopes for fin area in the first to third phases gradually increased with increasing body mass (Figure 4A–C and Table 2)
The results from morphometry analysis of the gills indicated that the gill area (GA) of fish in the early larval stage, i.e., 0.002–0.010 g in body mass, rapidly increased with increasing body mass when compared with changes in later life stages (Figure 2 and Table 1)
Summary
Oxygen consumption is considered a reflection of metabolism, which is the fundamental process by which food is changed into energy. The scaling of surface area with body mass has been geometrically estimated in various aquatic invertebrates, and these estimates significantly positively correlated with elongated or flattened body shape during ontogeny, as predicted by the SA theory, whereas the estimates predicted using the RTN theory included incorrect negative correlations [45,51,57] These theoretical approaches have been applied to study multiple levels of various biological processes; the scaling exponent of surface area in relation to body mass could influence the body surface-related material exchange capacity that is required for metabolism [45,51,57]. I discuss the ontogenetic phase shifts in metabolism in relation to the development of the respiratory organs
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