Scientists discovered a new species of freshwater fish that lives in a pond with

Question

Scientists discovered a new species of freshwater fish that lives in a pond with a very low O2 level. When they measured the oxygen extraction efficiency of the fish, it was twice as high as that of closely-related fresh water fish. Answer the following questions.

A. Propose a hypothesis to explain how the fish achieve a high O2 extraction efficiency.

B. List predictions that derive from your hypothesis. Be as specific as possible.

C. Propose an experiment to test your predictions. Be sure to describe types of measurements you will make, and what comparisons you will make (i.e., what is your control group?).

Explanation / Answer

A. In order to give any hypothesis we have to first see how the gills of fishes work. Gill of fishes contains blood vessels which have inherited capabilities of extracting oxygen out of the water that is taken by the fishes from their mouth. Now these gills have thin walls and when water passes over these walls of blood vessels oxygen from water moves into blood and then this oxygen rich bloood goes to different organs. Therefore one of the hypothesis can be the number of blood vessels that are present in the gills of that freshwater fish is higher as compared to normal fisher and apart from this the surface area of the thin walls that are present in the gills is also higher.

B. The various predictions based on the above stated hypothesis are:

Volume of gills is more as compared to normal gills.

Since more blood vessels require more area therefore the gills will larger in proportion to other organs.

The amount of oxygen in water remains the same therefore the fish need to gulp more water and hence mouth would be bigger in volume.

C. I’ll dissect the body of the fish to see the surface are of the walls present in the gills. Apart from this I’ll do the quantification of the volume of mouth and compare it with the volume of mouth that is present in the normal fishes.

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