In particular, the rate at which an organism takes up oxygen from its environment is expected to be related stoichiometrically to rates of ATP production by mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation and, therefore, is considered a proxy for metabolic rate ( Nelson, 2016). This increased interest has occurred alongside technological advances in methods of respirometry, which measure rates of gas exchange between an organism and their environment. The study of metabolic rates has recently received even greater attention because of the need to understand plastic and evolutionary responses to environmental change, particularly in aquatic ecosystems ( Jutfelt et al., 2018 Norin and Metcalfe, 2019 Pörtner et al., 2017). Metabolic rates have also been studied in the context of physiological and behavioural ecology ( Killen et al., 2013 Mathot et al., 2019 Metcalfe et al., 2016), as well as in the examination of broad ecological phenomena across levels of biological organisation ( Brown et al., 2004 Hatton et al., 2019). With the steep increase in studies using intermittent-flow respirometry, now is the ideal time to standardise reporting of methods, so that – in the future – data can be properly assessed by other scientists and conservationists.Įstimation of the metabolic rates of animals has been a core element of research in comparative physiology for decades ( Kleiber, 1947 Rolfe and Brown, 1997). Use of the provided checklist of required criteria by researchers when publishing their work should increase consistency of the reporting of methods for studies that use intermittent-flow respirometry. Furthermore, using a survey of the existing literature, we show that there has been incomplete and inconsistent reporting of methods for intermittent-flow respirometry over the past few decades. Here, we provide the first guidelines for reporting intermittent-flow respirometry methods, in the form of a checklist of criteria that we consider to be the minimum required for the interpretation, evaluation and replication of experiments using intermittent-flow respirometry. There are, however, no published guidelines for the reporting of methodological details when using this method. Aquatic respirometry measures the rate of oxygen uptake as a proxy for metabolic rate, and the intermittent-flow technique has numerous strengths for use with aquatic animals, allowing metabolic rate to be repeatedly estimated on individual animals over several hours or days and during exposure to various conditions or stimuli. The study of metabolism in aquatic animals is undergoing an especially pronounced expansion, with more researchers utilising intermittent-flow respirometry as a research tool than ever before. Interest in the measurement of metabolic rates is growing rapidly, because of the importance of metabolism in advancing our understanding of organismal physiology, behaviour, evolution and responses to environmental change.
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