Excretion and osmoregulation Alejandra Garcia

Birds

Instead of converting their ammonia to urea, they mostly convert it to uric acid, C5H4N3O3, which is excreted as a white paste or even a dry, white powder. Very little water is wasted here. The kidneys in a bird also function as a means to remove nitrogen from the blood. Eliminating the nitrogen requires that the body exerts a great deal of energy. The kidneys, lower intestine, and, in some species, salt glands all play important roles in osmoregulation. Water balance requires the input matches output. Most birds can obtain water directly by drinking. Birds can also obtain water via the foods they ingest. Even foods that seemingly contain little water can serve as a water source because water is produced as a by-product of cellular metabolism. This metabolic water can be of particular importance to birds in arid environments. Salt water fish Saltwater fish must conserve water. This is because most saltwater fish have lower salt concentrations in their bodies than does the seawater itself, which causes the fish to lose water through osmosis. Their kidneys stabilize this trend by concentrating bodily salts and excreting them in nitrogenous urine, keeping salt levels balanced, which promotes homeostasis. Saltwater fish have gills, which have evolved to excrete much of the excess salt from the seawater they drink. Saltwater fish have to drink a lot of seawater in the first place because of the water they lose through osmosis. Their gills also play an important role in excreting nitrogenous waste---mainly in the form of ammonia. Ammonia is as toxic to fish as it is to humans, but is flushed away in the seawater, where it is converted into other chemical forms through the nitrogen cycle.

Fresh water Fish

Freshwater fish are hypertonic to their water environment and therefore, water is continually diffusing into the fish through the gill membranes into the blood. The gills are also permeable to respiratory gases, ammonia waste products, and ions. Therefore, while water moves in towards the higher osmotic pressure of the blood, sodium and chloride ions also diffuse out of the fish, moving down their concentration gradients to the external environment. Freshwater fish must expend energy to regulate this ion loss and fluid uptake. Marine fish experience the opposite situation as their bodies are hypotonic to their saltwater environment. The continual uptake of water in freshwater species is regulated by the kidneys which continually produce large amounts of dilute urine. Despite the importance of healthy kidneys to help counteract the problem of taking on water, some salts are also lost in the large amounts of urine as well as through the membrane of the gills. Fortunately, the gills are also a site of ion uptake. Special cells in gill lamellae contain sodium and chloride pumps. These pumps are special enzymes that use energy to move the ions up their concentration gradient to maintain their higher concentration in the body. A sudden change in osmotic pressure can put great stress on the osmoregulatory system of a fish.