Gives an account of the morphologies of vertebrate respiratory organs and attempts to explicate the basis of the common and different structural and functional designs and stratagems that have evolved for acquisition of molecular oxygen. The book has been written with a broad readership in mind: students of biology as well as experts in the disciplines of zoology, physiology, morphology, biological microscopy, biomedical engineering, and ecology and those that work or may contemplate working on materials and aspects concerning respiration in whole organisms will find it useful. Scientists in earth sciences with particular interest on the outcomes of past interactions between environmental factors (the physical domain) and evolution and adaptation (the biological domain), mechanisms that have set the composition, patterning, and anatomies of extant animal life, will find the book of interest.

Gives an account of the morphologies of vertebrate respiratory organs and attempts to explicate the basis of the common and different structural and functional designs and stratagems that have evolved for acquisition of molecular oxygen. The book has been written with a broad readership in mind: students of biology as well as experts in the disciplines of zoology, physiology, morphology, biological microscopy, biomedical engineering, and ecology and those that work or may contemplate working on materials and aspects concerning respiration in whole organisms will find it useful. Scientists in earth sciences with particular interest on the outcomes of past interactions between environmental factors (the physical domain) and evolution and adaptation (the biological domain), mechanisms that have set the composition, patterning, and anatomies of extant animal life, will find the book of interest.

The main objective of this book is to present some of the fundamental structural aspects in the design of respiratory organs while debating and speculating on when, how and why these states were founded. The author's main thesis is that the modern gas exchangers are products of protracted processes that have entailed adaptation to specific environments and lifestyles. Only those feasible designs that have proven adequately compentent in meeting demands for molecular oxygen have been preserved. The author's approach has been to look into the limiting functional properties as regards the respiratory capacities of gas exchangers while finding out the specific structural adaptations that have evolved to meet the metabolic needs or to look into form and discern how it limits function.