Animals and Environmental Fitness: Physiological and Biochemical Aspects of Adaptation and Ecology

Animals and Environmental Fitness: Physiological and Biochemical Aspects of Adaptation and Ecology, Volume 2 contains the proceedings of the First Conference of the European Society for Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry held in Liège, Belgium, on August 27-31, 1979. The papers explore the physiology and biochemistry of animal adaptation and ecology and cover topics ranging from amino acid transport and metabolism during osmotic shock to the role of organic compounds in osmoregulation in plants and animals. This volume is comprised of 89 chapters and begins with an analysis of the transport and metabolism of amino acids under osmotic stress, followed by a discussion on cell volume regulation in isolated heart ventricles from the flounder, Platichthys flesus, perfused with anisosmotic media. Subsequent chapters focus on the effects of cholinergic drugs on the osmotic fragility of erythrocytes; strategies of osmoregulation in the fiddler crab Uca pugilator; ionic regulation in the African catfish Clarias mossambicus in water and air; and environmental and endocrine factors controlling osmotic water fluxes in gills of Sarotherodon (tilapia) mossambicus. The effect of seawater adaptation on the phosphatidyl-choline metabolism in the eel is also considered, along with evaporative water loss in anuran amphibians. This book will be of value to zoologists, physiologists, biologists, and biochemists.