Abstract
Digital radiographic imaging of blood circulation through leopard shark gills establishes a secondary lamellar transit time of 6.5 s. This duration, combined with estimates of cardiac output and hemoglobin-oxygen affinity, permits novel modeling of gill oxygen transfer in the time domain. The temporal model allows assessment of factors contributing to previously noted discrepancies between physiological and morphometric branchial oxygen conductance estimates. Lamellar transit time for shark blood is 20 times greater than human alveolar transit time, and thus correlates with a slower rate of hemoglobin-oxygen binding and a greater diffusion distance.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | R741-R746 |
| Journal | American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology |
| Volume | 263 |
| Issue number | 4 32-4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1992 |
Keywords
- gill conductance
- lamellar blood residence time
- specific blood conductance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physiology
- Physiology (medical)