Ammonia excretion in aquatic invertebrates: new insights and questions

Ammonia excretion in aquatic and terrestrial crabs.

The excretory transport of toxic ammonia across epithelia is not fully understood. This review presents data combined with models of ammonia excretion derived from studies on decapod crabs, with a view to providing new impetus to investigation of this essential issue. The majority of crabs preserve ammonotely regardless of their habitat, which varies from extreme hypersaline to freshwater aquat...

Aquatic Invertebrates

Animals are important and conspicuous elements inPacifi c Island ecosystems. They are crucial to the fl ow of energy and nutrients within ecosystems and they strongly infl uence, and in some cases control, the species composition and population structure of communities. Determining which animal species are present in an area and what they do is crucial to understanding how ecosystems function a...

A new paradigm for ammonia excretion in aquatic animals: role of Rhesus (Rh) glycoproteins.

Ammonia excretion at the gills of fish has been studied for 80 years, but the mechanism(s) involved remain controversial. The relatively recent discovery of the ammonia-transporting function of the Rhesus (Rh) proteins, a family related to the Mep/Amt family of methyl ammonia and ammonia transporters in bacteria, yeast and plants, and the occurrence of these genes and glycosylated proteins in f...

Endocrine Disruption in Aquatic Invertebrates

Immunotoxicological Threats of Pollutants in Aquatic Invertebrates

Immunology deals with the physiological activity of organisms to defend against pathogen and toxin invasion. Invertebrates residing in aquatic ecosystems often face toxicological threat arises from habitat pollution. The aquatic habitat of invertebrates is in the precarious risk of pollution caused by diverse groups of environmental toxins. Immunotoxins have been considered as a special group o...