Coping with a Watery Diet: Integration of Metabolic, Digestive, and Osmoregulatory Processes

水和电解质平衡的维持对陆生动物来说是一个严峻的挑战。因此，陆生动物用来保护水的策略已经得到了很好的研究。这一建议强调了陆生动物体内代谢调节的另一个研究较少的方面。与许多生活在干燥环境中的动物不同，花蜜喂养动物必须科普过量的水摄入。以花蜜为食的鸟类通过调节它们的进食量来对花蜜中糖浓度的变化做出反应。 随着糖浓度的增加，它们会减少摄入。 花蜜喂养的鸟类对糖浓度的摄入反应的结果是，在低到中等糖浓度下，鸟类摄入大量的水。以花蜜为食的鸟类所表现出的饮水速度将导致其他陆生脊椎动物的病理后果。这个项目调查了以花蜜为食的鸟类如何科普这种明显的多饮（水的过度摄入）。蜂鸟可以通过两种非排他性的机制来科普自然的自愿性多饮：1）它们可以避免在肠道中吸收水分，2）它们可以通过产生大量的尿液来消除摄入和吸收的水分。本项目的主要目标是确定这两种机制的相对重要性。由于鸟类在泄殖腔混合尿液和粪便，实现这一目标并不容易。 设计了一种依赖于药代动力学数学模型的微创方法来测量在不受限制的鸟类的肠道中吸收的摄入水的分数。 初步数据表明，蜂鸟摄入的大部分水分在肠道中被吸收。因此，在这些鸟类中，处理摄入的水的任务似乎被分配给肾脏。肾脏过滤血浆的速度是一个很好的例子，它的大小由许多潜在的竞争需求决定。节约用水的需要和消除代谢副产物的需要可能是不一致的。在该提案中，确定了另一个潜在的冲突：需要通过高肾小球滤过率来更好地处理吸收的水，但这些可能伴随着有价值的，尽管容易过滤的代谢物如葡萄糖的损失。蜂鸟表现出极高的血浆葡萄糖浓度（比糖尿病患者高几倍），并可能表现出高肾小球滤过率以清除吸收的饮食水分。然而，这些鸟类排泄物中的葡萄糖浓度极低。本项目的目的之一是阐明蜂鸟如何在高血糖水平和高水平的肾脏过滤下设法避免排泄葡萄糖。该项目意义重大，因为它将允许开发一个综合定量描述鸟类在水负荷和水合作用条件下的肾脏功能。此外，了解水处理的限制将提供关于动物是如何被设计的一般见解，关于设计的方面如何约束动物的生态性能，以及一个生理系统的设计方面如何对其他系统施加限制。花蜜喂养鸟类的肠道调节过程突出了理解肠道中发生的事件对进食行为、肾脏和代谢功能的影响的相关性。比较生理学家强调，低水可用性是能源和微生境利用的制约因素。我们的研究将强调水-能量相互作用的一个新方面，并填补我们对陆地动物体内能量调节的理解的空白。

The maintenance of water and electrolyte balance can pose a serious challenge for terrestrial animals. Consequently, the strategies used by terrestrial animals to conserve water have been well studied. This proposal emphasizes another, much less studied, aspect of osmoregulation in land animals. Unlike many animals living in dry environments, nectar feeding animals must cope with excessive water ingestion. Nectar-feeding birds respond to variation in the sugar concentration of floral nectar by modulating how much they eat. They decrease ingestion as sugar concentration increases. The intake response of nectar-feeding birds to sugar concentration has the consequence that at low to moderate sugar concentrations the birds ingest phenomenal amounts of water. The drinking rates exhibited by nectar-feeding birds would lead to pathological consequences in other terrestrial vertebrates. This project investigates how nectar-feeding birds cope with this apparent polydipsia (water over-ingestion). Hummingbirds can cope with natural voluntary polydipsia through two non-exclusive mechanisms: 1) They can avoid absorbing water in the intestine, and 2) they can get rid of ingested and absorbed water by producing copious urine. A primary objective of this project is to determine the relative importance of these two mechanisms. Because birds mix urine and feces in the cloaca, achieving this objective is not easy. A minimally invasive method that relies on a pharmacokinetic mathematical model was designed to measure the fraction of ingested water that is absorbed in the intestines of unrestrained birds. Preliminary data suggests that in hummingbirds most of the water ingested is absorbed in the intestine. Consequently, in these birds the task of disposing of ingested water seems to be assigned to the kidneys. The rate at which the kidney filters plasma is a good example of a trait whose magnitude is determined by many potentially competing demands. The need to conserve water and the need to eliminate metabolic by-products can be in discord. In this proposal another potential conflict is identified: The need to dispose of absorbed water is better served by high glomerular filtration rates, but these can be accompanied by the loss of valuable, albeit easily filterable, metabolites like glucose. Hummingbirds exhibit extremely high plasma glucose concentrations (several times higher than those of a diabetic human), and presumably show high glomerular filtration rates to get rid of absorbed dietary water. However, the concentration of glucose in the excreta of these birds is extremely low. A goal of this project is to elucidate how hummingbirds manage to avoid excreting glucose in the face of high plasma glucose levels and high levels of filtration by the kidney.The project is significant because it will allow development of an integrated quantitative description of kidney function under the range of water loads and hydration conditions that birds experience. Also, understanding the limits to water processing will provide general insights into how animals are designed, on how aspects of design constrain ecological performance of animals, and into how aspects of design in one physiological system can impose limits on other systems. The osmoregulatory processes of nectar feeding birds highlight the relevance of understanding the impact that events taking place in the gut can have for feeding behavior, and renal and metabolic function. Comparative physiologists have emphasized low water availability as a constraint on energy and microhabitat use. Our research will emphasize a novel aspect of the water-energy interaction and fill a gap in our understanding of osmoregulation in land animals.