Apparent Transport of Water by Insect Excretory Systems

Active transport of water by insect Malpighian tubules.

Through most of his career, Arthur Ramsay was fascinated by matters osmotic. In the period after the Second World War, he worked on osmotic relations of the earthworm (Ramsay, 1949a), developing typically novel methods for measuring the melting-point and sodium content of minute quantities of fluids (Ramsay, 1949b, 1950). However, in the early 1950s, Ramsay started working on insect Malpighian ...

Excretory transport of xenobiotics by dogfish shark rectal gland tubules.

Marine elasmobranch rectal gland is a specialized, osmoregulatory organ composed of numerous blind-ended, branched tubules emptying into a central duct. To date, NaCl excretion has been its only described function. Here we use isolated rectal gland tubule fragments from dogfish shark ( Squalus acanthias), fluorescent xenobiotics, and confocal microscopy to describe a second function, xenobiotic...

Apparent photosynthesis of soybean plants as affected by changes in leaf water potential under field conditions

The Functional Design of the Insect Excretory System

Insects have a slowly operating excretory system in which the passive rate of movement of haemolymph solutes into a slowly secreted primary excretory fluid is restricted by a reduction in the area available for passive transfer. They may have come to possess such an energy-saving system as a result of their evolution as small animals in osmotically and ionically stressful environments. Although...

Renal Water and Ion Transport Systems

T he teaching of renal physiology is an ever-evolving and fascinating opportunity to learn as well as to teach. Regardless of the particular format of our teaching, a constantly waxing tide of detailed information forces us to be selective. We cannot teach it all. In my own lectures and discussions of renal ion and water transport systems, I try to 1) avoid complex and detailed areas that are n...