Del Valle Juana C, López Mañanes Alejandra A
Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina.
J Exp Zool A Ecol Genet Physiol. 2011 Mar 1;315(3):141-8. doi: 10.1002/jez.658. Epub 2010 Dec 8.
We studied the occurrence of digestive strategies at different levels in females of the subterranean herbivorous rodent Ctenomys talarum living in their natural habitat. We determined the dimensions of different parts of the gastrointestinal tract and organs along as the activity of key digestive enzymes(sucrase, maltase and N-aminopeptidase) in small intestine in females seasonally caught. Females of C. talarum did not show seasonal variations in the mass of the different parts of the gastrointestinal tract. In nonreproductive females large intestine was longer in autumn, whereas reproductive females did not show seasonal variations in the length of the different parts of the gut. Females of C. talarum exhibited a high sucrose, maltase and N-aminopeptidase activity in small intestine, although these activities were higher in small intestine of females caught in autumn (nonreproductive) than in females caught in winter (reproductive). The results show that C. talarum females exhibit characteristics in the gut at the morphological and biochemical level, which could represent digestive strategies to face the constraints imposed by their costly particular way of life.
我们研究了生活在自然栖息地的地下食草啮齿动物塔拉毛栉鼠雌性个体不同水平的消化策略。我们测定了胃肠道不同部位和器官的尺寸，以及季节性捕获的雌性个体小肠中关键消化酶（蔗糖酶、麦芽糖酶和N-氨基肽酶）的活性。塔拉毛栉鼠雌性个体胃肠道不同部位的质量没有季节性变化。在非繁殖期雌性个体中，大肠在秋季较长，而繁殖期雌性个体肠道不同部位的长度没有季节性变化。塔拉毛栉鼠雌性个体小肠中蔗糖酶、麦芽糖酶和N-氨基肽酶活性较高，尽管秋季（非繁殖期）捕获的雌性个体小肠中的这些活性高于冬季（繁殖期）捕获的雌性个体。结果表明，塔拉毛栉鼠雌性个体在肠道的形态和生化水平上表现出一些特征，这可能代表了应对其昂贵特殊生活方式所带来限制的消化策略。
