Insects :D

Key terms:

• Spiracles
• Trachae
• Tracheoles.
  

Some insects will have a high metabolic rate from springing, jumping, flying, etc. Need a lot of food for respiration to provide ATP for muscle contraction, in which case, they wouldwould need oxygen and some sort of system.

They are small, and therefore have a large SA/V ratio.

Exoskelton- skeleton on the outside. Hard, rigid and waxxy. Subject to dehydration,exo skeleton is waterproff to prevent this, and therefore, gases cannot be exchanged through the surface.

Tracheal System:

---------
| head |----------|-----------------)
---------| thorax |____abdomen_)
|_______|

Okay, yeah. I just drew a diagram of bug anatomy with my keyboard. Swish, eh?

Anywhoz...

Air enters the insect's body through valve like openings (spiracles) in the exoskeleton. These are located laterally along the thorax and abdomen of most insects.
Air flow is regulated by small muscles that operate one of two flap like valves within each spiracle -contracting to close the spiracle, or relaxing to open it.

Trachae are tubes that carry air directly to cells for gas exchange. They penetrate between cells and muscle fibres. After passing through a spiracle, air enters a longitudial tracheal trunk, eventually diffusing throughout a complex branching network of trachael tubes that divide smaller and smaller to recah every part of it's body.
At the end of each trachael branch, a specialised cell (tracheole) provides a thin, moist surface for the exchange of gases between atospheric air and a living cells.
Oxygen in the tracheal tube frist dissolves in the liquid of the tracheole and then diffuses into the cytoplasmof an adjacent cell. At the same time, carbon dioxide, produced as a waste product of cellular respiration, diffuses out of the cell and eventually out of the body through the tracheal system.

The muscle contracts using ATP from aerobic respiration, and then uses anerobic respiration, which produces lactic aicd, which is soluble in water, this lowers the water pressure in the muscle, and water then moves in by osmosis from the tracheole. Since the oxygen is dissolved, this makes a faster rate of movement of oxygen to muscles.

-Thoughts?

Nin. (: