Relationships between spleen and respiration in the newt

Specimens of newt, Triturus cristatus carnifex (Laurenti), anesthetized by submersion in 0.2% chlorbutol in tap water for 15 min, and then placed out of water in a damp terrarium, show hypertrophy of the spleen that in 2 hr gradually increases from 0.31 +/- 0.12%with respect to body weight to 1.56 +/- 0.26% (means and standard deviation calculated for groups of six animals). Other anesthetics either do not produce hypnosis (Veronal), do not have a prolonged enough effect (ethyl ether, chloroform), or induce vasodilatation, which prevents hypertrophy (MS-222, urethane). The spleen hypertrophy, seen histologically to be due exclusively to blood congestion, is not caused by either a pharmacological effect of the chlorbutol or by the hypnotic state, as it does not appear in submerged anesthetized animals, unless the water is constantly stirred by a magnetic agitator, and can be reversed depending on the ventilation of the animal's skin. The spleen hoards blood when oxygenation is good (in air or stirred water) and releases this supply in the bloodstream when oxygenation is insufficient (in still water). The hypoxic "diffusion boundary layer," which, in still water, forms around the immobile newts, hampers respiratory exchange and stimulates the spleen contraction. This mechanism and its relationship to oxygenation has been demonstrated statistically in unanesthetized newts as well, in both air and water, despite the interference of two contrasting factors--lung respiration and spontaneous motor activity--absent in anesthesized animals. Congestion and decongestion of the spleen are the physiological mechanisms compensating for variations in the level of oxygenation, an alternative to the "capillary recruitment" described by Poczopko and Burggren and Moalli in may amphibians that appears to be absent in newts. The newt spleen, known to play a lesser role in erythropoiesis and destruction of aged erythrocytes than that traditionally assigned to it is thus of primary importance in respiration.