Diet effect on osmoregulation in the subterranean rodent Ctenomys talarum

Abstract

Water conservation requires osmoregulatory skills, sometimes limited by the environment and/or physiological and behavioral characteristics acquired along the evolutionary history of the species. Fossoriality had probably emerged as a survival mechanism to face increasing aridity, as suggested for Ctenomys, a genus that radiated to different environments. Ctenomys talarum (tuco-tuco) is an herbivorous subterranean rodent that lives in coastal grasslands inside humid burrows that reduce evaporation. However, their osmoregulatory mechanisms may be challenged by atmospheric variations when foraging aboveground and by the annual variability in dietary water and salt content. Then, it is of great interest to identify how much of this flexibility of C .talarum is attributed to physiological regulation. We analyzed the effect of water and salt content of diet on urinary, plasmatic, fecal and respiratory parameters. Tuco-tucos were not able to maintain their body weight under the offered monodiet, especially under the low hydrated diet, which explains its generalist and opportunistic foraging behavior. C. talarum mainly obtained water through food, whereas water metabolic production was negligible. Evaporative water loss did not vary between diets, but individuals under water restriction showed decreased fecal water loss and urine volume, high urine concentration but stable plasmatic osmolality and ionic concentration values. Under salt stress, urinary parameters remained relatively stable and high plasmatic osmolality was detected. Despite C. talarum produced more diluted urine than rodents from xeric environments, it is able to concentrate it 4 times above than the required at field even under the lowest water availability. This may be a characteristic associated with the evolutionary history of the species, which evolved in an arid context.