Fraction of energy used for swimming

Range ~70 %
Organism Ciliate Paramecium caudatum
Reference Katsu-Kimura Y, Nakaya F, Baba SA, Mogami Y. Substantial energy expenditure for locomotion in ciliates verified by means of simultaneous measurement of oxygen consumption rate and swimming speed. J Exp Biol. 2009 Jun212(Pt 12):1819-24. doi: 10.1242/jeb.028894. p.1820 left column 2nd paragraphPubMed ID19482999
Method "In this paper, [researchers] will present the energy expenditure of Paramecium in close relation to its swimming activity. For this purpose, paramecia were confined in a small volume of the chamber (<1 ml) and the oxygen consumption rate and the swimming speed were measured simultaneously from the same specimens. Oxygen consumption was measured by means of an optic fluorescence oxygen sensor (Okubo et al., 2008). Because this sensor has proved not to alter the amount of dissolved oxygen unlike oxygen electrodes, which consume a substantial amount of oxygen during the measurement procedure, it is ideal for measuring the oxygen concentration in a small volume of a sample. Swimming speed was measured from the recording obtained by the optical slice method (Kato et al., 2003)."
Comments "[Researchers'] measurements revealed a linear relationship between the rate of the oxygen consumption and the speed of freely swimming Paramecium. By extrapolating from the regression line between oxygen consumption rate and swimming speed, [they] could estimate that the energy expenditure of the cell in the ‘non-motile’ state is about a quarter of the total energy consumed by the cell when swimming. This indicates that Paramecium uses a large amount (ca.70%) of energy for swimming."
Entered by Uri M
ID 110784