The Couch Potato Effect: Comparing the Metabolic Rates of Captive and Wild Clearnose Skates

Understanding how captivity plays a role on the metabolism of marine animals is crucial, as it can help to determine future laboratory protocols and provide aquariums and other facilities with knowledge about the effects of long-term captivity. Clearnose skates are the most common elasmobranch species in the Delaware Bay, but little knowledge was known about their metabolic processes. We wanted to understand if there was an effect on the routine metabolic rates of Clearnose skates that have been in captivity. Routine metabolic rate is the metabolic rate for a fasted animal swimming normally. Wild skates were caught in the Delaware Bay, making sure they were of similar size to the group of skates in captivity. In order to determine metabolic rate, the oxygen consumption of an animal needs to be found. For each skate, an intermittent flow respirometer was used to accomplish this by allowing the skate to draw down oxygen for two-hour periods. The system was then flushed which re-oxygenated the water and the process was repeated. Dissolved oxygen of the tank was measured throughout the trial and then used as a proxy to calculate routine metabolic rates of the captive skates were compared to those of the wild, splitting the data analysis by sex. There was not a significant difference found between the metabolic rates of the captive and wild skates, but that could’ve been the result of small sample sizes. Our research may confirm that there was no couch potato effect and Clearnose skate metabolic rates aren’t strongly affected by captivity, but more research needed to be done in order to support that conclusion.

Presentation Preference: Poster

Primary Presenter: Kristin Lewis, Howard University (kristin.lewis@bison.howard.edu)

Authors:

Kristin Lewis, Howard University  (kristin.lewis@bison.howard.edu)

Ahmad Crawford, Eckerd College  (crawford.ahmad40@gmail.com)

Hunter Christensen, University of Delaware  (hunchr@udel.edu)

Trinity Clifford, University of Delaware  (trinic@udel.edu)

Tess Avery, University of Delaware  (tmavery@udel.edu)

Scott Goldberg, University of Delaware  (scottgol@udel.edu)

Andrea Leontiou, University of Delaware  (aleonti@udel.edu)

Aaron Carlisle, University of Delaware  (carlisle@udel.edu)