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Bioe 20B
NAME_______________________________ TA________________________ Partner__________________________
For each of the following, answer the questions below. You are encouraged to work in pairs but each person must hand
in their own worksheet. We will go over some of these questions in class.
The graph to the right is for a species of water snake.
1) This graph is showing____________________.
a. Whole body metabolic rate
b. Mass specific metabolic rate
2) What is the approximate oxygen consumption
for a 100 gram snake in the polluted site? In
the reference site? Show how you figured this
out on the graph.
Hopkins et al., 1999
3) Can you tell whether this is standard metabolic
rate (note we are using standard since this is
an ectothermic animal)?
4) Why can oxygen consumption be used to
measure metabolic rate?
5) In one brief sentence state what the main conclusion is from this graph.
6) Because these data are for snakes, what key environmental variable must the researchers have controlled across
all individual measurements to ensure they were able to compare measurements between snakes (HINT:
ectotherm vs. endotherm)? Why is this important?
Understanding Metabolism
Bioe 20B
The graph to the right is from a paper
about pythons (Leite et al., 2013). Use
this graph to answer the following
questions. VO2 is the nomenclature for
oxygen consumption.
7) This graph is
showing____________________.
a. Whole body metabolic rate
b. Mass specific metabolic rate
8) In one to two brief sentences
state the main result of this graph.
9) If you wanted to measure the standard metabolic rate of a python, approximately how long would you need to
wait after it had eaten a meal?
10) In class, we discussed the relationship between metabolism and heat. We also discussed two bioenergetic
strategies, endothermy and ectothermy. Snakes are ectothermic and therefore primarily rely on environmental
sources of heat. However, this does not mean that they do not make heat. During the metabolic peak would
the snake’s body temperature change and if so, how?
11) Do you think you would see a similar pattern in humans after a big meal (e.g. Thanksgiving!)? Do you expect the
human’s body temperature to change significantly? If not, what happens to the heat generated from the
increase in metabolism?
Understanding Metabolism
Bioe 20B
In the next part of this exercise, you are going to plot real data from several papers, then use your plots to answer some
questions. For each plot, be sure to label the x and y axis with titles and units.
Table 1. Data on on environmental temperature and oxygen consumption rates by sea otters (Enhydra lutris)
approximated from Costa and Kooyman 1982.
Environmental Temperature (oC) V02 (mL*kg‐1*min‐1)
5 24
10 18
15 16
20 15
25 14.5
30 14.5
Table 2. Data on oxygen consumption rates by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) at different water temperatures
approximated from Yeates and Houser 2008
c Oxygen consumption rate (ml 02 min‐1 kg‐1)
2.9 5.7
4.2 5.9
4.2 4.3
5.3 4.1
5.7 3.2
7.8 3.3
8.2 3.9
9.8 2.6
9.6 2.2
12.0 2.1
12.2 3.3
14.3 2.7
14.5 2.0
14.7 1.9
15.2 1.9
16.1 2.6
15.9 1.7
15.2 1.9
Table 3. Data on oxygen consumption rates by tadpoles (Limnodynastes peronii) at different environmental test
temperatures approximated from Kern et al. 2015
Test Temperature (oC) Oxygen consumption (ml 02 h‐1)
13 0.03
18 0.05
23 0.08
28 0.11
33 0.11
37 0.12
Understanding Metabolism
Bioe 20B
Sea Otters
30
25
20
15
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Bottlenose Dolphin
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Understanding Metabolism
Bioe 20B
Tadpoles
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
12. For the sea otter and the dolphin graph, in plain language describe what happens to metabolic rate as
environmental temperature goes DOWN.
13. What happens to metabolic rate as environmental temperature goes down in the tadpole?
14. For the sea otter graph, label the lower critical temperature and the thermal neutral zone. Where is the upper
critical temperature? (Hint – why might it be missing?)