Q47 — Cost of Transport in Locomotion

Theoretical A Real exam question — full text reproduced under IBO's CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

The efficiency of animal locomotion can be expressed in terms of the cost of transport (COT), derived from oxygen consumption versus velocity data. The oxygen consumption plot represents the amount of energy required to achieve and maintain a certain speed. COT represents how efficiently an organism can cover a unit distance at a certain speed, and generally has the same trendline shape among different animals and different gaits of the single animal species.

Graph of oxygen consumption versus swimming velocity for a cod, alongside the quadratic trendline equation for cost of transport with its fitted coefficients. Figure 1. Oxygen consumption versus velocity graph for cod (fish). Table 1. Trendline equation for COT (V is in km/h) and list of coefficients suiting data obtained from cod: COT = a + bV + cV², a = 0.17, b = -0.22, c = 0.14.

On your answer sheet, indicate “T” for true statements and “F” for false ones.

A. Flying birds would have a lower oxygen consumption at minimum moving speed on oxygen consumption versus velocity graph than a cod of comparable size.

B. The minimum possible COT of the cod is achieved at 0.6 km/h.

C. If you sample the speeds at which a large population of horses move during the week, you would see that all speeds fall within a single, narrow range.

D. For animals that run, the oxygen consumption versus velocity plot for running would be more linear than the cod's.

← Previous: Q46 Next: Q48 →

Question reproduced from IBO 2024, Theoretical Exam Part A, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — attributed to the International Biology Olympiad. Open the full exam PDF · Community solutions (unofficial)