A multi-tasking stomach: functional coexistence of acid-peptic digestion and defensive body inflation in three distantly related vertebrate lineages.

ABSTRACT: Puffer and porcupine fishes (families Diodontidae and Tetraodontidae, order Tetradontiformes) are known for their extraordinary ability to triple their body size by swallowing and retaining large amounts of seawater in their accommodating stomachs. This inflation mechanism provides a defence to predation; however, it is associated with the secondary loss of the stomach's digestive function. Ingestion of alkaline seawater during inflation would make acidification inefficient (a potential driver for the loss of gastric digestion), paralleled by the loss of acid-peptic genes. We tested the hypothesis of stomach inflation as a driver for the convergent evolution of stomach loss by investigating the gastric phenotype and genotype of four distantly related stomach inflating gnathostomes: sargass

SUBMITTER: Ferreira P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8807057 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature