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Hemoglobin Physiology in Vertebrate Animals: a Cautionary Approach to Adaptationist Thinking

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Vertebrate Gas Exchange

Part of the book series: Advances in Comparative and Environmental Physiology ((COMPARATIVE,volume 6))

Abstract

The apparent “goodness of fit” of animals to environments brings into focus immediate adaptations to local conditions. This interaction of organism and environment has led us into a particular way of thinking about the role of hemoglobin in oxygen transport, in which the near omnipotence of natural selection is acknowledged in the design of the protein for function under particular circumstances (e.g., Powers 1980; Perutz 1983). The neo-Darwinian concept of adaptation implies pre-existent problems to which animals are fitted by a dynamical process, the process being “adaptation” (Lewontin 1978). In this view, there is a tendency to perceive natural selection as operating with few constraints, and non- adaptive features, such as those imposed by phyletic inertia, structural and ontogenetic constraints, play only a minor role in shaping the physiological traits of animals.

“Some organisms use less oxygen than others under conditions that seem to entail the same effort. Can we say that those organisms that consume less oxygen are more efficient and better adapted? Certainly not, because as long as they are alive, they have all met the requirements for an uninterrupted ontogeny. Comparisons about efficiency belong to the realm of the observer’s descriptions; they are not directly related to what happens in the individual histories of conservation of adaptation.” (Maturana and Varela 1987)

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  1. Department of Zoology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    R. M. G. Wells

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  1. Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, B3H 4J1, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Robert G. Boutilier

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Wells, R.M.G. (1990). Hemoglobin Physiology in Vertebrate Animals: a Cautionary Approach to Adaptationist Thinking. In: Boutilier, R.G. (eds) Vertebrate Gas Exchange. Advances in Comparative and Environmental Physiology, vol 6. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75380-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75380-0_5

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