Osmoregulation in Fishes And What Threatens the Habitats it Occurs In!
Osmoregulation in Fishes
And What Threatens the Habitats it Occurs In!
For all living things, from plants to humans to fish, maintaining homeostasis through regulating temperature, nutrients, gas-exchange, and hydration is key to survival. Most of these processes are performed regardless of outside environment (such as breathing). However, the ways other processes perform are based entirely on what the system (body) of an organism is encountering outside the system. It is extremely important that an organism respond to changes in the environment to maintain homeostasis, or illness and death will occur (Campbell). This can include simple responses, such as when dogs shivering in response to the temperature dropping, or they can be highly complicated such as the process in this paper- osmoregulation in fish (VT).
Osmoregulation is the process by which organisms balance water, or solvent, concentrations with salt, or solute, concentrations in tissues and cells (Campbell). Organisms must perform this process of regulation because of the “Fick’s Law of Diffusion”, also called osmosis, which states that, “The flow of solvent from a solution of lower solute concentration to one of higher solute concentration” will occur. This means that in an organism water will cross a semi-permeable layer, tissues in cell walls in this case, from an area of lesser concentration of salts to an area of greater concentration (Campbell). To maintain the proper balance of salts and water in the aquatic environment fish, and all vertebrates, evolved to utilize a very specialized organ to solve this problem: The Glomerular/ Vertebrate Kidney (Washinton).
In early evolving species, fish were beginning to live in freshwater systems after entire millennia of living in the oceans (Washington). This meant that their cells had a higher concentration of salts than the environment. According to osmosis, that meant that excess water (trying to diffuse the salts) and the loss of salts was
And What Threatens the Habitats it Occurs In!
For all living things, from plants to humans to fish, maintaining homeostasis through regulating temperature, nutrients, gas-exchange, and hydration is key to survival. Most of these processes are performed regardless of outside environment (such as breathing). However, the ways other processes perform are based entirely on what the system (body) of an organism is encountering outside the system. It is extremely important that an organism respond to changes in the environment to maintain homeostasis, or illness and death will occur (Campbell). This can include simple responses, such as when dogs shivering in response to the temperature dropping, or they can be highly complicated such as the process in this paper- osmoregulation in fish (VT).
Osmoregulation is the process by which organisms balance water, or solvent, concentrations with salt, or solute, concentrations in tissues and cells (Campbell). Organisms must perform this process of regulation because of the “Fick’s Law of Diffusion”, also called osmosis, which states that, “The flow of solvent from a solution of lower solute concentration to one of higher solute concentration” will occur. This means that in an organism water will cross a semi-permeable layer, tissues in cell walls in this case, from an area of lesser concentration of salts to an area of greater concentration (Campbell). To maintain the proper balance of salts and water in the aquatic environment fish, and all vertebrates, evolved to utilize a very specialized organ to solve this problem: The Glomerular/ Vertebrate Kidney (Washinton).
In early evolving species, fish were beginning to live in freshwater systems after entire millennia of living in the oceans (Washington). This meant that their cells had a higher concentration of salts than the environment. According to osmosis, that meant that excess water (trying to diffuse the salts) and the loss of salts was