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First published online October 18, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 4283-4294 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02503

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Water conservation in fasting northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris)

Christopher W. Lester^* and Daniel P. Costa

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: cwlester{at}comcast.net)

Accepted 21 August 2006

Prolonged terrestrial fasting is a key element in the life history of elephant seals. While on land seals typically fast without access to fresh water, and thus must maintain positive water balance by reductions in water loss such that they can subsist primarily on metabolic water production (MWP). The terrestrial apnea demonstrated by seals may reduce respiratory evaporative water loss (REWL) to levels that allow seals to make a net gain of water from MWP. We empirically measured REWL in 13 fasting northern elephant seal pups and determined the effects on water conservation of a breathing mode that incorporates a regular pattern of apneas, of 1 min in duration, followed by eupneic recovery, compared with a breathing mode with no apneas longer than 20 s and resembling typical breathing patterns in other mammals (normative breathing). Overall REWL fell 41% from 0.075±0.013 g min^-1 (mean ± s.d.) during normative breathing to 0.044±0.006 g min^-1 during apneic breathing. The decline in REWL is attributed to a decrease in overall ventilation rate, made possible by a decline in metabolic rate along with an increase in oxygen extraction that would occur during apneic breathing. Data on the range of ambient humidity conditions at the local breeding site were collected and used to bound the range of environmental conditions used in laboratory measurements. Our data showed that the observed variations in ambient humidity had no significant effect on REWL. A combination of apneic breathing and the complex nasal turbinates allows fasting elephant seals to reduce REWL well below the rate of MWP so that they can maintain water balance during the fast.

Key words: fasting physiology, Mirounga angustirostris, Pinnipedia, respiratory evaporative water loss, water conservation