
This is a submission from my mom
Described as a “squished version of Jabba the Hutt,” by its finders, these frogs “are flat and have eyes that float above the water. They have skin flaps coming off their arms and legs.
The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia’s Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the Bickford was part of the trip and co-authored a paper the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology.
Bickford said the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this unusual trait, including a few species of salamanders and a wormlike creature known as a caecilian.
“These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet,” Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.
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Consider the following:
Diffusion of Gases
I. Respiration involves diffusion of gases across plasma membranes
A. gases are dissolved in aqueous solutions on either side of the membrane (yes, even in lungs)
B. rate of diffusion is governed by Fick’s law of diffusion:
R=D x A(Dp/d)
Where R=rate of diffusion
D=the diffusion constant
A= the area over which diffusion takes place
Dp=difference in concentration between the interior of the organism and the external environment (note: for gases, this is the difference between their partial pressures)
d=the distance across which diffusion takes place
C. Different respiratory systems have evolved that optimize R by…
1. increasing A
2. decreasing d
3. increasing Dp
What mechanisms in Fick’s law allow for the frog to breathe?