What best describes the foetal growth pattern in multiparous pregnancies?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

To tackle the question, I’ll examine what each option claims about fetal growth in multiparous pregnancies and how it links to muscle development.
Option 1: 'Multiparous lambs had smaller muscles as they had less muscle fibres' This aligns with the idea that the number of muscle fibres (myofibres) is largely determined prenatally, and a reduction in fibre number can lead to smaller overall muscle mass. If multiparous pregnancies allocate nutrients differently or experience competition among fetuses, it can limit myogenesis, resulting in fewer muscle fibres and smaller muscles. This option provides a mechanistic link between parity, fibre number, and muscle size.
Option 2: 'Multiparous lambs had smaller muscles as they were physically smaller' While logically plausible that overall body size relates to muscle size, this statement is tautological and doesn’t specify a biological mechanism or direct link to fetal muscle fibre development. It describes a correlation with no causal detail about muscle fibre formation, making it less precise than Option 1.
Option 3: 'Multiparous lambs were smaller as they had smaller muscle fibres' Here the claim flips the causal direction: the primary issue is the size of the muscle fibres themselves rather than the quantity of fibres. In many developmental scenarios, fibre number is established prenatally and fibre size (hypertrophy) occurs postnatally; this option introduces a mechanism (smaller fibres) that may not reflect the reported pattern if the study emphasized fibre number over fibre size.
Option 4: 'None of the muscle measurements in Experiment 2 are important as they did not influence live weight' This is an overgeneralization that dismisses the relevance of muscle measurements to growth. If the experiment found differences in muscle development with parity that relate to overall growth or carcass characteristics, declaring them unimportant would ignore observed data.
In summary, Option 1 provides a coherent explanation grounded in established developmental biology: fewer muscle fibres can lead to smaller muscles, and parity effects may influence fetal myogenesis. The other options either rely on circular reasoning, misstate the primary developmental mechanism, or dismiss potentially meaningful measurements without justification.

MERGE_2025_0317 Tutorial 1: muscle fibre dynamics and animal growth

What best describes the foetal growth pattern in multiparous pregnancies?

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