Helga Guderley

• PhD
• Professor at Université Laval

Used vehicle crankcase oils are a source of contamination in Caribbean marine environments and may alter the oxidative balance of organism that inhabiting coastal ecosystems. This paper aims to evaluate effects of a water-soluble fraction of used vehicle crankcase oils (WSF-UVCO) on the antioxidant responses of the flame scallop Ctenoides scaber. T...

Climate change challenges marine organisms by constraining their temperature-dependent scope for performance, fitness, and survival. According to the concept of Oxygen and Capacity Limited Thermal Tolerance (OCLTT), the overall thermal performance curve relates to an organism’s aerobic power budget, its overall aerobic scope for growth, exercise, r...

Transcriptomic studies are facilitating the search for the molecular bases of adaptation in natural populations, but the impact of these differences in mRNA content on animal physiology are often unknown. One way to determine if molecular changes have the potential to influence animal physiology and performance is to test for correlated changes at...

Peter Hochachka was an early pioneer in the field of comparative biochemistry. He passed away in 2002 after 4 decades of research in the discipline. To celebrate his contributions and to coincide with what would have been his 80th birthday, a group of his former students organized a symposium that ran as a satellite to the 2017 Canadian Society of...

Modifications in shell structure, mantle, and adductor muscle are considered derived adaptations that allowed scallops to swim. This suggests that morphological properties of the adductor muscle and shell should relate to swimming performance in scallops. Various morphological characteristics of the shell (mass, aspect ratio, and volume between the...

The repeated evolution of similar phenotypes by similar mechanisms can be indicative of local adaptation, constraints or biases in the evolutionary process. Little is known about the incidence of physiological convergence in natural populations, so here we test if energy metabolism in ‘dwarf’ and ‘normal’ Lake Whitefish evolves by similar mechanism...

Pectinids are among the few bivalves that swim, with the prime motivation of escaping their predators. Swimming engages the large adductor muscle to close the valves, the hinge ligament to open them after muscle relaxation and the muscular mantle to direct the jets. In this chapter, the impact of shell characteristics on scallop swimming, the biome...

In scallops, aerobic power requirements of gonad maturation reduce HSP70 synthesis capacity in response to thermal or hypoxia stress. As dietary lipid quality is crucial for membrane function, we predicted that supplementing Argopecten purpuratus broodstock with essential polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) during gonadal maturation would mitigate t...

The physiological mechanisms underlying local adaptation in natural populations of animals, and whether the same mechanisms contribute to adaptation and acclimation, are largely unknown. Therefore, we tested for evolutionary divergence in aerobic exercise physiology in laboratory bred, size-matched crosses of ancestral, benthic, normal Lake Whitefi...

Scallops swim using jet propulsion produced by expulsion of water from between the valves by rapid contraction of the adductor muscle. The valves are subsequently opened by a ligament that acts like a spring mechanism. Compared with burrowing or sessile bivalves, scallops have ligaments with greater resilience. To determine whether the ligament res...

To assess whether giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus use distinct escape strategies to respond to their seastar and crustacean predators, escape responses to two major seastar predators, Asterias vulgaris and Leptasterias polaris, two seastars with little predatory impact, Crossaster papposus and Solaster endeca, and two crustacean predators,...

Although laboratory experiments allow greater control of environmental conditions than field studies, they have several drawbacks. To analyze physiological responses to forcing environmental variables, experimental conditions should mimic natural conditions as closely as possible. For filter-feeding organisms in particular, diet quality and quantit...

Although dietary lipid quality markedly affects fatty acid (FA) composition of mitochondrial membranes from rainbow trout red muscle (Oncorhynchus mykiss), mitochondrial processes are relatively unchanged. As certain classes of phospholipids interact more intimately with membrane proteins than others, we examined whether specific phospholipid class...

Key Points When activated and in platelet storage bags, platelets release respiratory-competent mitochondria, a recognized damage-associated molecular pattern. Mitochondria, descendant of Rickettsia prowazekii, serve as substrate for bactericidal sPLA2-IIA to promote inflammation.

Abstract Although all scallops swim using their adductor muscle to close their valves, scallop species differ considerably in how they use their muscle during escape responses, in parallel with the striking interspecific differences in shell morphology. This provides an excellent opportunity to study links between muscle metabolic capacities and an...

Changes in total lipids and fatty acid profiles (FAPs) of gonad, digestive gland, mantle and muscle of the tropical scallop Nodipecten nodosus were examined during coastal upwelling and upwelling relaxation periods. Total lipids were most abundant in digestive gland, and intermediate in female gonad. Multidimensional scaling analysis of similaritie...

The impressive swimming escape response of scallops uses a simple locomotor system that facilitates analysis of the functional relationships between its primary components. One large adductor muscle, two valves, the muscular mantle, and the rubbery hinge ligament are the basic elements allowing swimming by jet propulsion. Although these basic funct...

To examine whether membrane fatty acid (FA) composition has a greater impact upon specific components of oxidative phosphorylation or on overall properties of muscle mitochondria, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were fed two diets differing only in FA composition. Diet 1 was enriched in 18:1n-9 and 18:2n-6 while Diet 2 was enriched in 22:6n-3....

The simple locomotor system of scallops facilitates study of muscle use during locomotion. We compared five species of scallops with different shell morphologies to see whether shell morphology and muscle use change in parallel or whether muscle use can compensate for morphological constraints. Force recordings during escape responses revealed that...

When habitat temperature changes, body temperature follows in most fish. Thermal change can markedly shift the physical state of mitochondrial membranes, and may perturb the equilibrium among oxidative phosphorylation, proton leak, and ROS production. A fundamental response to thermal change occurs in mitochondrial phospholipids, with head groups a...

Metabolic Modifications during StarvationStarvation, Physical Activity, and Muscle CapacitiesStarvation and Antioxidant Defenses: Antioxidant EnzymesStarvation and Antioxidant Defenses: Exogenous AntioxidantsPerspectivesReferences

We examined whether escape response performance and mitochondrial capacities could reveal differences created by feeding scallops, Argopecten purpuratus, mono-specific algal diets composed of either Chaetoceros calcitrans or Isochrysis galbana (variety T. iso) hereafter T. iso. Before and after feeding scallops with these diets, we assessed force p...

Multilocus allozyme heterozygosity (MLH) has been positively correlated with growth in some marine bivalves and was suggested to facilitate swimming activity in pectinids. Using two highly mobile scallops, Placopecten magellanicus and Argopecten purpuratus, we examined escape response performance and morphometric characteristics as a function of al...

Placopecten magellanicus start their lives as free-living veligers, then become byssally attached juveniles, mobile young adults and finally generally sedentary large adults. Although biomechanical considerations help explain this size dependence of swimming activity, the patterns of muscle use and the physiological capacities of the adductor muscl...

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) were exposed to one of four feeding regimes, 16 weeks of food deprivation (U) or satiation feeding (F) or two 8-week periods of food deprivation followed by satiation feeding (UF) or vice versa (FU), to determine whether relationships between nucleic acids or enzymes and growth rates result from a general enhancement of...

The aim of this study was to examine how the biochemical composition of tissues varied with growth rate and condition in juvenile Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) caught in the wild and kept in captivity. The hepatosomatic index, brain water content, and muscle sarcoplasmic protein content as well as the activities of phosphofructokinase, lactate dehydr...

The reproductive migration from James Bay to the Eastmain River leads to more marked changes in the metabolic organization of the swimming muscle of Coregonus artedii than Coregonus clupeaformis. The glycolytic potential of both red and white muscle decreased significantly during the migration while the aerobic potential increased significantly at...

We compared the physiological status of Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, starved or fed at high rations with those of cod sampled in late spring (June 15) and early fall (October 3) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The white muscle of starved cod had lower lactate dehydrogenase activity, buffering capacity, and sarcoplasmic, myofibrillar, and total protein...

Full-sib heritabilities of burst-swimming capacity and its enzymatic correlates were calculated in juvenile threespine sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, from 25 families raised under constant laboratory conditions. Variation among families in burst-swimming performance, enzyme activities, body size, and condition of the juveniles was considerab...

To delineate what modifications in muscle metabolic biochemistry correlate with transition to air breathing in fishes, the myotomal muscles of aruana, an obligate water breather, and Arapaima, a related obligate air breather, were compared using electron microscopy and enzyme methods. White muscle in both species maintained a rather similar ultrast...

The ultrastructure of the inner myocardium of aruana, an osteoglossid water breather, and Arapaima, an air-breathing Amazon relative, was compared. The aruana heart was laden with glycogen granules while Arapaima heart was fat loaded. Associated with air breathing in Arapaima, the ultrastructure of the inner myocardium displayed abundant mitochondr...

Glutamate dehydrogenases (EC 1.4.1.2) from the kidney of Osteoglossum bicirrhosum (called aruana) and Arapaima gigas were kinetically characterized. The two enzymes exhibited several common characteristics including Vmax activity ratio, pH optimum, affinity for cofactors, a marked preference for NAD(H) over NADP(H), and a very low affinity for NH4+...

Pyruvate kinases from the kidney and liver of the osteoglossid Arapaima gigas were partially purified and characterized kinetically. The two enzymes have different elect rophoretic mobilities at pH 7.0, and while they share some qualitative similarities they show quantitative differences in their catalytic and regulatory properties. Both enzymes ar...

Weight change, mortality, and neuromuscular coordination, as measured by righting time, were used to evaluate the resistance of Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis to hypoosmotic stress. Acclimation to a salinity of 24 or 25‰ decreased the righting time of urchins after 96 h of hypoosmotic stress. The effect of acclimation was the same for four size...

During their period of reproductive activity, the sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus (trachurus) and Gasterosteus wheatlandi show differences in their use of available microhabitats in the salt marshes of the St. Lawrence estuary. Gasterosteus aculeatus is found at all stations along a tidal river, Rivière des Vases, while G. wheatlandi is absent...

Individual male sticklebacks established nests, courted females, and cared for their fertilized eggs at 0 or 20‰ salinity. The time to hatching was shorter at 0 than at 20‰. One-week-old fry that hatched in freshwater had a significantly lower mortality after 96 h in freshwater than fry that hatched in brackish water. Fry that hatched at 20‰ grew l...

Given the rapid thermal equilibration of most fish with their environment, thermal compensation of metabolic and contractile properties is essential for the maintenance of locomotory capacities over a wide range of temperatures. The response of fish swimming performance, contractile properties of isolated fibers, myosin ATPase activity, and metabol...

The metabolic organization of swimming muscles from anadromous cisco (Coregonus artedii) and lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) sampled in two rivers presenting different regimes of migratory difficulty and temperature was compared. Cisco muscle showed an increased aerobic capacity in the river where the fishes' migration is longer, as shown b...

Reptiles thermoregulate behaviourally, but change their preferred temperature and the optimal temperature for performance seasonally. We evaluated whether the digestive and locomotor systems of the alligator show parallel metabolic adjustments during thermal acclimation. To this end, we allowed juvenile alligators to grow under thermal conditions t...

Migratory behaviour with its associated phenotypic changes is generally viewed as an adaptive strategy because it incurs survival or reproductive advantages to migrants. The development of a migrant phenotype is believed to be controlled by threshold mechanisms, where individuals emigrate only after surpassing a particular body size but delay migra...

Converting food to chemical energy (ATP) that is usable by cells is a principal requirement to sustain life. The rate of ATP production has to be sufficient for housekeeping functions, such as protein synthesis and maintaining membrane potentials, as well as for growth and locomotion. Energy metabolism is temperature sensitive, and animals respond...

Evolutionary explanations of the adaptive value of animal characteristics are often expressed in energetic terms, but unless they are accompanied by demonstrations of limited energy availability, they remain speculative. In this review, we argue that metabolic power budgeting provides easily testable mechanisms through which energetically efficient...

Green-striped burrowing frogs (Cyclorana alboguttata) can depress their resting metabolism by more than 80% during aestivation. Previous studies have shown that this species is able to withstand long periods of immobilisation during aestivation while apparently maintaining whole muscle mass and contractile performance. The aim of this study was to...

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) is an iteroparous, anadromous species that exhibits some of the greatest within-population variability in size and age at maturity of all vertebrates. In the conditional reproductive strategy of salmonids, the male reproductive tactic expressed is believed to depend on an individual male's status relative to others...

In addition to courting females, male threespine sticklebacks must guard their nests from attacks on the eggs by female cannibals. We hypothesized that the presence of females in high densities in tide pools adversely affects a male's health and reproductive success. In the laboratory males housed with conspecific females during the breeding season...

A high natural mortality rate has been documented for the saucer scallop Amusium balloti, an Australian scallop found on sediment bottoms at 30–60 m deep, but little is known about the causes of mortality. We studied escape responses of A. balloti to five consumers common in the bycatch of the scallop fishery as a means of identifying potential pre...

To examine the impact of environmental history on the thermal sensitivity of escape response performance in juvenile giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus, we compared animals sampled in late May, when water temperatures and day length were increasing, to animals sampled in late September, when water temperature and day length were decreasing. H...

To evaluate whether decreases in muscle metabolic capacities and increases in plasma cortisol explain the effects of neighboring conspecifics on male three-spine sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus, we housed mature males alone, with a mature female, or with a rival mature male. The neighbors were separated from the focal male by a partition that a...

During their escape response, scallops swim, using jet propulsion created by rhythmically opening and closing their valves. Valve closure is powered by the large adductor muscle that acts against the hinge ligament. We compared in vivo force production during escape responses and in vitro isometric contractions measured on fiber bundles from the se...

The energetic cost of spawning and the endogenous factors that modulate spawning could modify escape response performance, leading to a conflict between the requirements of two fundamental components of fitness: reproduction and survival. We examined whether spawning changed force production during escape responses by the functionally hermaphroditi...

Selective breeding of laboratory house mice (Mus domesticus) for high voluntary wheel running has generated four replicate lines that show an almost threefold increase in daily wheel-running distances as compared with four nonselected control lines. An unusual hindlimb "mini-muscle" phenotype (small muscles, increased mitochondrial enzyme levels, d...

In nature, seasons may be more reliably announced by changes in photoperiod than in temperature. To evaluate the role of day length in setting oxidative capacities of trout muscle mitochondria, we acclimated trout to summer (15 °C, 16L:8D), winter (5 °C, 8L:16D) and mixed conditions (15 °C, 8L:16D). Maximal oxidative capacities of isolated mitochon...

We investigated the relationship between physiological properties, swimming performance, shell fluctuating asymmetry, and heterozygosity at allozyme loci in the Iceland scallop, Chlamys islandica, in an attempt to describe potential physiological mechanisms for the negative relationship between shell fluctuating asymmetry and survival of this speci...

Giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus, respond to the presence of starfish predators with an escape response consisting of a series of rapid valve adductions that allow the scallop to jump or swim away from the predator. To evaluate the coordination of the activity of the tonic and phasic muscles during such escape responses, we recorded their f...

In scallops, gametogenesis and spawning can diminish the metabolic capacities of the adductor muscle and reduce escape response performance. To evaluate potential mechanisms underlying this compromise between reproductive investment and escape response, we examined the impact of reproductive stage (pre-spawned, spawned and reproductive quiescent) o...

Scallops are quite vulnerable to handling and transport because they cannot completely close their valves. We examined how handling stress changed force production during escape responses of juvenile giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus and compared these changes to those of adenylate energy charge (AEC) and phosphoarginine levels in the adduct...

Male Atlantic salmon follow a conditional strategy, becoming either "combatants" that undertake a seaward migration and spend at least a year at sea or "sneakers" that remain in freshwater and mature as parr. A variety of physiological indices showed significant but small differences between the offspring of males that use these two reproductive ta...

To escape from starfish predators, giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus, swim using series of strong phasic contractions interrupted by tonic contractions. To investigate whether these tonic contractions allow metabolic recuperation of the adductor muscle, we sampled scallops at rest (Control), after an initial series of phasic contractions (Ph...

Selective breeding of mice for high voluntary wheel running has favoured characteristics that facilitate sustained, aerobically supported activity, including a "mini-muscle" phenotype with markedly reduced hind limb muscle mass, increased mass-specific activities of oxidative enzymes, decreased % myosin heavy chain IIb, and, in the medial gastrocne...

Dietary conditioning of juvenile trout changed the acyl chain composition of mitochondrial phospholipids and the oxidative capacities of muscle mitochondria. Trout were fed three diets differing only in fatty acid (FA) composition. The highly unsaturated 22:6 n-3 (DHA) accounted for 0.4, 14, and 30% of fatty acids in Diets 1, 2 and 3. After 10 week...

We examined the influence of the reproductive cycle and environmental factors on variations of the condition index (CI), tissue dry mass, shell size, total lipid content, and relative percent of fatty acids in the mussel, Perna perna. Spat or juveniles were reared to commercial size (70 mm) in suspension culture in the Golfo de Cariaco, Venezuela b...

Handling stress coupled with air exposure reduced the contractile performance during escape responses of 2+ scallops, Placopecten magellanicus, modifying maximal and mean phasic force production, the number of phasic contractions and the minimal interval between phasic contractions as well as reducing maximal tonic force production and increasing t...

Ecological and evolutionary changes in native populations facing invasion by exotic species are increasingly reported. Recently, it has been shown that competition with exotic rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) disrupts dominance hierarchies within groups of native Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The genetic and molecular actors underlying phenotyp...

Large annual escapees of farmed Atlantic salmon enhance the risk of extinction of wild populations through genetic and ecological interactions. Recently, we documented evolutionary change in gene transcription between farmed and wild Atlantic salmon after only five generations of artificial selection. While differences for most quantitative traits...

Evolutionary genomics has benefited from methods that allow identifying evolutionarily important genomic regions on a genomewide scale, including genome scans and QTL mapping. Recently, genomewide scanning by means of microarrays has permitted assessing gene transcription differences among species or populations. However, the identification of diff...

We compared lipid dynamics and the physiological responses of blue mussels Mytilus edulis, a cold-adapted species, and oysters Crassostrea virginica, a warmer-water species, during simulated overwintering and passage to spring conditions. To simulate overwintering, animals were held at 0°C, 4°C and 9°C for 3 months and then gradually brought to and...

Prolonged swimming capacity (critical swimming speed, Ucrit, protocol) and metabolism were measured for 14 Atlantic cod Gadus morhua exposed to seven oxygen levels within the non-lethal range normally encountered in the Gulf of St Lawrence (35 to 100% saturation). Burst-and-coast swimming was triggered earlier (at lower speeds) in hypoxia, and burs...

Atlantic cod populations live in a wide thermal range and can differ genetically and physiologically. Thermal sensitivity of metabolic capacity and swimming performance may vary along a latitudinal gradient, to facilitate performance in distinct thermal environments. To evaluate this hypothesis, we compared the thermal sensitivity of performance in...

Pathogenic saprolegniaceae species are among the major disease-causing agents in farmed salmonids and in freshwater fish in general. Recent studies have used high-throughput cDNA-based methods to identify new potential actors of fish defence systems against various bacteria and viruses. However, the response of fish to fungal or fungus-like pathoge...

To assess sex differences in reproductive effort, we examined the biochemical composition and energetic content of the principal body components of the broadcast spawning sea star Asterias vulgaris in the Mingan Islands in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, eastern Canada. The body wall was the most stable body component, showing no variations in m...

Changes in the properties of mitochondria from oxidative muscle of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss were examined during warm (5 degrees C to 15 degrees C) acclimation. Trout were studied shortly after the initial thermal change and after 8 weeks acclimation to 15 degrees C. To identify potential mechanisms by which oxidative capacities change, th...

We compared lipid dynamics and the physiologicalresponses of blue mussels Mytilus edulis, a cold-adaptedspecies, and oysters Crassostrea virginica, a warmer-waterspecies, during simulated overwintering and passage tospring conditions. To simulate overwintering, animals wereheld at 0°C, 4°C and 9°C for 3 months and then graduallybrought to and maint...

The dramatic escape response of some scallops is modified by reproductive investment and by acclimation temperature. Despite considerable knowledge of the physiology of the escape response, functional links between escape response performance, organismal rates of oxygen uptake, and tissue metabolic capacities are little known. We measured oxygen co...

Prolonged selective breeding of mice (Mus musculus) for high levels of voluntary wheel running has favoured an unusual phenotype ("mini muscles"), apparently caused by a single Mendelian recessive allele, in which most hind-limb muscles are markedly reduced in mass, but have increased mass-specific activities of mitochondrial enzymes. We examined w...

Over the last 50 yr, thermal biology has shifted from a largely physiological science to a more integrated science of behavior, physiology, ecology, and evolution. Today, the mechanisms that underlie responses to environmental temperature are being scrutinized at levels ranging from genes to organisms. From these investigations, a theory of thermal...

Mitochondria were isolated from the liver, kidney and mixed hindlimb skeletal muscle of three vertebrate species; the laboratory rat Rattus norvegicus, the bearded dragon lizard Pogona vitticeps, and the cane toad Bufo marinus. These vertebrate species are approximately the same body mass and have similar body temperatures. The content of cytochrom...

Farmed salmon strains have been selected to improve growth rates as well as other traits of commercial interest but the 2 million farmed salmon escaping annually may enhance the risk of extinction of wild populations through genetic and ecological interactions. Here, we compare the transcription profiles of 3557 genes in the progeny of farmed and w...

Salinity preferences of four sympatric species of sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus, Gasterosteus wheatlandi, Pungitius pungitius, Apelles quadracus) were studied after acclimation to different regimes of photoperiod and temperature. The results indicate that photoperiod and temperature influence salinity preferences of G. aculeatus, G. wheatlan...

In the field, Atlantic cod face seasonal changes in food availability that in turn lead to changes in condition. To examine the physiological consequences of these changes in condition, we measured routine metabolic rate (RMR) to estimate standard metabolic rate (SMR), active metabolic rate (AMR), aerobic scope, critical swimming speed (Ucrit), cos...

We studied the molecular composition of muscle mitochondria to evaluate whether the contents of cytochromes or adenine nucleotide translocase (ANT) or phospholipid acyl compositions reflect differences in mitochondrial oxidative capacities. We isolated mitochondria from three vertebrates of similar size and preferred temperature, the rat (Rattus no...

Territorial three-spined sticklebacks moved 5·3 times as far as non-territorial males in 2 min (P < 0·001) and spent 11·1 times longer in aggression in the pools (P< 0·001). Territorial males had slightly higher condition factors than non-territorial males. Condition factor was correlated positively with the gonad mass (P< 0·006), carotenoid concen...

Pairs of reproductively mature male three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) were introduced into unfamiliar aquaria and observed until one male became dominant. Skin carotenoid content, morphometric indexes, and metabolic capacities of the axial and pectoral muscles were examined to establish whether morphological or physiological paramet...

Muscle protein decreases only during prolonged starvation of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua, Gadidae), but in the absence of protein renewal, muscle metabolic capacities may decrease before marked loss of muscle protein. This study aimed at elucidating the threshold at which decreases in growth and condition reduce muscle metabolic capacities, as well...

In aquatic ectotherms, muscle metabolic capacities are strongly influenced by exogenous factors, principally temperature and food availability. Seasonal changes in temperature lead many organisms to modify their metabolic machinery so as to maintain capacity even in "slower" cold habitats. Modifications of mitochondrial capacities are central in th...

We assessed sex differences in reproductive investment of the brooding sea star Leptasterias polaris (in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, eastern Canada) by examining the biochemical composition and energetic content of the principal body components in 3 contrasting periods: just before spawning, after spawning and after brooding. The reproductiv...