X. Capacity Adaptations

b. respiration

Here is one example. These are data from Joseph Torres and collaborators at UC Santa Barbara. They show the rate of oxygen consumption of marine fishes that occur at different depths. All the organisms were measured at one atmosphere pressure. One might ask, "Well, you're measuring these animals at one atmosphere, what happens when you depressurize them?" It turns out that if you look at organisms that occur perhaps down to 500-1000 meters, there is relatively little effect of pressure on respiration rates over this depth range. My point in bringing that issue up, is that these respiration data probably give a very good reflection of how in situ respiration rates decrease with increasing depth of occurrence. You'll notice that this is a logarithmic scale. This is a very substantial change in the rate of respiration with depth. Why does this occur?

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