Amphibian Intestine Allometry

Across four large vertebrate groups-fish, reptiles, birds and mammals- intestine length has been shown to scale hyper-allometrically with body mass (BM), at an exponent higher than the geometric (isometric) expectation, 0.33. So far, amphibians have not been investigated in this respect. Combining original data from dissections and literature data, we evaluated the scaling of total intestine length with BM in the adult stages of 38 amphibian species (37 of which anurans). The BM range of investigated taxa was 2.2 to 113.5 g. When accounting for phylogeny, intestine length scaled with BM at an exponent with a 95% confidence interval of 0.39 to 0.53, corroborating the hyper-allometric scaling observed in other vertebrates. The hypothetical explanation is that larger animals, while requiring a proportionate intestinal absorptive surface to meet their metabolic demands, need to maintain short diffusion distances between the sites of digestive enzyme secretion/nutrient absorption and the digesta. This mechanism should result in hypo-allometric scaling of intestine diameter, with the hyper-allometric scaling of intestinal length ensuring the overall constancy of functional organ surface.