CHAPTER 40

INTRODUCTION
TO ANIMAL FORM
AND FUNCTION

Prepared by
Brenda Leady, University of Toledo

Copyright (c) The McGraw-Hill

Companies, Inc. Permission required
for reproduction or display. 1
 All animal cells share similarities in the
ways in which they
 Exchange materials with their surroundings
 Obtain energy from organic nutrients
 Synthesize complex molecules
 Duplicate themselves
 Detect and respond to signals in their
immediate environment

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Tissues
 Specialized cells of a given types cluster
together
 4 categories
 Muscle
 Nervous
 Epithelial
 Connective

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Muscle tissue
 Cells specialized to contract
 3 types
 Skeletal – attached to bone or exoskeleton for
locomotion, voluntary control
 Smooth – surrounds hollow tubes and cavities
for propulsion of contents, involuntary control
 Cardiac – only in the heart, involuntary control

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Nervous tissue
 Initiate and conduct electrical signals from
one part of the animal’s body to another
 Electrical signals produced in one nerve
cell may stimulate or inhibit other nerve
cells to
 Initiate
new electrical signals
 Stimulate muscle to contract
 Stimulate glands to release chemicals

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Epithelial tissues
 Sheets of densely packed cells that
 Cover the body or individual organs
 Line the walls of body cavities
 Specialized to protect and secrete or absorb
 Rest on basal lamina or basement
membrane
 Can function as selective barriers

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Connective tissues
 Connect, anchor, and support
 Includes blood, adipose, bone, cartilage, loose
and dense connective tissue
 Form an extracellular matrix around cells
 Provides scaffold for attachment
 Protects and cushions
 Mechanical strength
 Transmit information

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Organs
 Composed of 2 or more kinds of tissues
 Organ system – different organs work
together to perform an overall function
 Organ systems frequently work together –
nervous and endocrine system
 Spatial arrangement of organs into organ
systems part of overall body plan
 Body plan controlled by highly conserved
family of genes with homologs in all animals

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Organ Development and Function Are
Controlled by Homeotic Genes
 Homeotic genes – family of ancient highly
conserved genes found in all animals
 Determine timing and spatial patterning of the
anteroposterior body axis during development
 In vertebrates known as Hox genes
 Important role in determining where organs form
 Hox genes also important for growth,
development and function of organs in adults
Body fluids
 2 main compartments
 Intracellularfluid – inside cells
 Extracellular fluid – outside cells
 Plasma – fluid portion of blood
 Interstitial fluid – fluid between cells

 Separate in closed systems

 Hemolymph intermingles to fluids in many inverts

 Intracellular and extracellular fluid can be

very different in solute composition

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Movement of water
 Plasma membranes tend to be highly
permeable to water and
 Fluid moves readily between compartments
 Osmosis
 Swollen or shrunken cells do not operate well
 Can happen when cells exposed to more
dilute (hypoosmotic) or more concentrated
(hyperosmotic) extracellular fluids

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Movement of solutes
 Passive diffusion
 Movement of a solute down its concentration
gradient
 No carrier or ATP required
 Only lipid soluble molecules
 Transport proteins used in
 Facilitateddiffusion – passive
 Active transport

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Structure and function
 Key theme is structure determines function
 Compare respiratory systems of insect and
mammal
 Structural similarities suggest similar function
 Tubes connect with the outside environment
terminating in 1 cell thick structures
 Tubes serve as air conduits
 Thin cells with high surface area for diffusion of gases

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 All organs that mediate diffusion or
absorption have an extensive surface area
 Increased space requirements avoided by
shape changes
 Folding for example
 SA/V – surface area to volume ratio

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Homeostasis
 Process of adjusting to the external environment
and maintaining a stable internal environment
 Conformers – maintain same fluid composition
as environment – cheaper
 Regulators – internal composition of fluids
different from environment – more expensive
 Animal can be both with respect to different
variables

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 No physiological function is constant for very
long, which is why we call them “variables”
 Normally, blood sugar (glucose) remains at fairly
steady and predictable levels in any healthy
individual
 After a meal the level of glucose in your blood
can increase quickly
 If you skip a meal, your blood sugar level may
drop slightly
 Homeostatic mechanisms restore blood glucose
to normal levels in the blood

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Homeostatic control systems
 Sensor – monitors particular variable
 Integrator – compares signals from the
sensor to a baseline set point
 Effector – compensates for deviations
between actual value and set point
 Example – body temperature in mammals

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Feedback
 Fundamental feature of homeostasis
 Major way disturbances are minimized
 Negative feedback
 Positive feedback

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Negative feedback
 Variable being regulated brings about
responses that move the variable in the
opposite direction
 Decrease in body temperature leads to
responses that increase body temperature
 May occur at organ, cellular or molecular
level

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Positive feedback
 Far less common
 Accelerates a process
 Reinforces the direction of the change
 Birth in mammals

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Feedforward regulation
 Animal’s body begins preparing for a
change in some variable before it occurs
 Anticipatory
 Speeds up homeostatic responses and
minimizes deviations from the set point
 Many result from or are modified by
learning

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Pavlov Demonstrated the Relationship
Between Learning and Feedforward
Processes
 Demonstrated that feedforward processes
associated with digestion could be
conditioned to an irrelevant stimulus
 Used ticking metronome (not ringing bell)
 Conditioned stimulus by itself can elicit
increased salivation
 Other sounds and stimuli also worked
 Conditioned response not permanent
Local homeostatic responses
 Some homeostatic responses may be highly
localized
 Paracrine signaling – molecules released into
interstitial fluid to act on nearby cells
 Neurotransmitters released from one nerve cell
travel to an adjacent nerve cell
 In contrast, hormones are chemical messengers
produced in a gland, secreted into the blood,
and act on distant cells

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