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Journal of Experimental Biology 168,199-217 (1992)
Published by Company of Biologists 1992

Cardiac Output And Blood Flow Distribution During Swimming and Voluntary Diving of the Tufted Duck (AYthya FUligula)

R. M. BEVAN ¹ and P. J. BUTLER ¹

¹ School of Biological Sciences, The University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

Cardiac output (Vb) and blood flow distribution were continuously measured in the tufted duck when diving voluntarily. Blood flows through pulmonary, ischiadic, carotid and brachiocephalic arteries were recorded using miniature pulsed Doppler flow probes. By measuring these flows, cardiac output and blood flow to the leg muscles and to the flight muscles could be calculated.

Heart rate and Vb were well correlated, making the former a very good indicator of any changes in the latter. Blood flow to the leg muscles increased substantially during both swimming and diving to five times the resting rate. Cardiac output, though, was lower during the later portions of a dive than it was during swimming. A consequence of this lower Vb was that the proportion of Vb supplying the leg muscles was much greater during diving than it was whilst the duck was swimming. This indicates that more extensive peripheral vasoconstriction was occurring during diving. The blood flow to the wing muscles during diving was found to be significantly lower than that at rest but there was no net change in blood flow through the brachiocephalic arteries as the blood flow to the head increased.

Peripheral vasoconstriction must, therefore, have been occurring in other parts of the body during diving, possibly within the vascular beds supplying the gastrointestinal tract, the skin and the respiratory muscles. This study supports the prediction that voluntary diving in tufted ducks is a compromise between the physiological response to involuntary submergence and that to exercise in air, but with the bias towards the latter.

Key words: diving, swimming, tufted duck, Aythya fuligula, cardiac output, blood flow

Accepted on April 3, 1992

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