Abstract
MANY freshwater animals take up metal ions from solution in the surrounding water, often by active transport against a concentration gradient. The uptake of ions would be helped, and their loss opposed, by any means which increases the electrochemical potential of the ions in question in the external medium. One such means would be for the animal to secrete into the water a cationic substance to which the skin is not permeable; this would set up a Gibbs–Donnan effect (whereby an unequal distribution of diffusible ions is established at equilibrium on the two sides of a membrane if one side contains a non-diffusible ion) on the ions which are to be absorbed. The presence of such a mechanism in nature would be evident from the accumulation in the growth medium of cationic substances whose effect on the uptake of metals could be demonstrated experimentally.
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Thomas, J. D., Benjamin, M., Lough, A., and Aram, R. H., J. Anim. Ecol., 43, 839–860 (1974).
Thomas, J. D., Goldsworthy, G. J., and Aram, R. H., J. Anim. Ecol., 44, 1–28 (1975).
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OGSTON, C. Possible Gibbs–Donnan mechanism for cation uptake. Nature 260, 650 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/260650a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/260650a0
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