User:Jalashiareliford/Spotted Lungfish

Article Edit
Topic : Spotted Lungfish

Topic: Waste Excretion During Air Breathing

My Edit: The lungfish can aestivate on land within a dry mucus cocoon. As most tropical fish are ammoniotelic, being on land can induce ammonia toxicity – with negative organismal and cellular level consequences – due to a lack of water to flush the excreted ammonia from the gills and other cutaneous surfaces. Studies have shown the lungfish has evolved the ability to reduce endogenous ammonia production, as well as an ornithine-urea cycle to increase the conversion rate of ammonia to less toxic urea, to defend against this toxicity. Urea production requires a lot of energy, so the organism must be inactive on land.

My Sources: Five Tropical Air-Breathing Fishes, Six Different Strategies to Defend against Ammonia Toxicity on Land & Greatly Elevated Urea Excretion after Air-Exposure Appears to be Carrier Mediated in the Slender Lungfish (Protopterus dolloi)

Where on the Article will I add my edit: under the biology section right after the last sentence mentioning aestivation.