Thünen Institute of Fisheries Ecology, Herwigstraße 31, 27572 Bremerhaven, Germany.
Institute of Zoology and Center for Molecular Biosciences, University Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
J Exp Biol. 2023 Sep 1;226(17). doi: 10.1242/jeb.246095. Epub 2023 Sep 11.
Many aspects of the typically 5000-10,000 km spawning migration of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) remain unknown. As part of this migration, eels undertake extensive diurnal vertical migrations to depths below 1000 m, being exposed to a wide range of temperatures and hydrostatic pressures. In this experimental study, we exposed eels to different combinations of temperature (12-20°C) and pressure (100--800 kPa) during long-term sustained swimming (32-47 days). Both temperature and pressure affected oxygen consumption rate, such that there was a significant increase of metabolic rate with temperature, whereas pressure reduced oxygen consumption, albeit only at higher temperatures. Average oxygen consumption rates ranged between 15 mg kg-1 h-1 (12°C, 100 kPa) and 30.2 mg kg-1 h-1 (20°C, 100 kPa), highlighting the remarkably high swimming efficiency of this species and, more importantly, indicating that past evaluations of the cost of transport are potentially overestimates as they are often based on experiments conducted at atmospheric pressure at higher temperatures.
鳗鲡（Anguilla anguilla）的洄游距离通常长达 5000-10000 公里，但其中仍有许多方面不为人知。在这种洄游过程中，鳗鲡会进行广泛的昼夜垂直迁徙，下潜至 1000 米以下的深度，期间会暴露于各种温度和静压条件下。在这项实验研究中，我们在鳗鲡进行长途持续游泳（32-47 天）的过程中，让它们分别处于不同的温度（12-20°C）和压力（100-800kPa）组合下。温度和压力均会影响耗氧率，具体表现为代谢率随温度升高而显著增加，而压力则会降低耗氧量，但仅在较高温度下才会如此。平均耗氧率范围在 15mg/kg/h（12°C，100kPa）到 30.2mg/kg/h（20°C，100kPa）之间，这突显了该物种极高的游泳效率，更重要的是，这表明过去对运输成本的评估可能存在过高估计，因为它们通常基于在较高温度下的大气压下进行的实验得出。
