Affiliation:
1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
2. Department of Biology, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ 08628, USA
Abstract
Muscles power movement, yet the conceptual link between muscle performance and locomotor performance is poorly developed. Frog jumping provides an ideal system to probe the relationship between muscle capacity and locomotor performance, because a jump is a single discrete event and mechanical power output is a critical determinant of jump distance. We tested the hypothesis that interspecific variation in jump performance could be explained by variability in available muscle power. We used force plate ergometry to measure power produced during jumping in Cuban tree frogs (Osteopilus septentrionalis), leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) and cane toads (Bufo marinus). We also measured peak isotonic power output in isolated plantaris muscles for each species. As expected, jump performance varied widely.Osteopilus septentrionalisdeveloped peak power outputs of 1047.0 ± 119.7 W kg−1hindlimb muscle mass, about five times that ofB. marinus(198.5 ± 54.5 W kg−1). Values forR. pipienswere intermediate (543.9 ± 96.2 W kg−1). These differences in jump power were not matched by differences in available muscle power, which were 312.7 ± 28.9, 321.8 ± 48.5 and 262.8 ± 23.2 W kg−1muscle mass forO. septentrionalis,R. pipiensandB. marinus, respectively. The lack of correlation between available muscle power and jump power suggests that non-muscular mechanisms (e.g. elastic energy storage) can obscure the link between muscle mechanical performance and locomotor performance.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Cited by
50 articles.
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