Walsum, T.A. van (2012) Muscle physiology during diving, what determines the end of a dive for the penguin? Bachelor's Thesis, Biology.
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Abstract
The Emperor penguin is capable of diving to extreme extent. It can dive up to 27.6 minutes and dive to approximately 550 meters in depth. It is the most accomplished diver of all the penguin species. Studies on the dive limit of the Emperor penguin discovered a crossover from aerobic metabolism to anaerobic metabolism. And depending on whether the Emperor was measured in man-made diving holes or in free-diving state, dive duration lasts on aerobic metabolism for 5.6 and 8 minutes respectively. After this amount of time, the Emperor relies on anaerobic metabolism. Anaerobic metabolism, however, is less efficient in creating energy (releases only 1/18th of energy otherwise provided by aerobic metabolism) and creates the product lactic acid. At a certain point, this build up of lactic acid must be washed out, thus limiting diving duration. Anaerobic metabolism has been proven to be less efficient, even so, approximately 35-55% observed dives of the Emperor are reported to use it as a main energy source. The increasing amount of lactic acid should trigger the penguin to terminate the dive, however, there is no net increase in blood lactate concentrations during the dive. The product, lactic acid is created, however the muscles are cut off from blood circulation during a dive, preventing the lactic acid from entering the rest of the body.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | xx, xx |
| Degree programme: | Biology |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Feb 2018 07:50 |
| Last Modified: | 02 May 2019 07:34 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/10447 |
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