The transition of animal life from water onto land is associated with well-documented changes in respiratory physiology and blood chemistry, including a dramatic increase in blood pCO₂ and bicarbonate, and changes in ventilatory control. However, these changes have primarily been documented among ancestrally aquatic animal lineages that have evolved to breathe air. In contrast, the physiological consequences of air-breathing animals secondarily adopting aquatic gas exchange are not well explored. Insects are arguably the most successful air-breathing animals, but they have also re-evolved the ability to breathe water multiple times. The juvenile life stages of many insect lineages possess tracheal gills for aquatic gas exchange, but all shift back to breathing air in their adult form. This makes these amphibiotic insects an instructive contrast to most other animal groups, being not only an ancestrally air-breathing group of animals that have re-adapted to life in water, but also a group that undergoes an ontogenetic shift from water back to air across their life cycle. This graphical review summarizes the current knowledge on how blood acid-base balance and ventilatory control change in the dragonfly during its water-to-air transition, and highlights some of the remaining gaps to be filled.

动物生命从水到土地的过渡与呼吸生理和血液化学的有据可查的变化有关，包括血液中pCO ₂的急剧增加和碳酸氢盐，以及通气控制的变化。但是，这些变化主要是在进化为呼吸空气的祖先水生动物谱系中记录的。相比之下，没有很好地研究过呼吸动物第二次采用水气交换的生理后果。昆虫可以说是最成功的呼吸动物，但它们也重新进化了多次呼吸水的能力。许多昆虫谱系的幼虫生命阶段都具有气管for，可以进行水生气体交换，但是它们全部以成年形态转移回呼吸空气中。这使得这些两栖昆虫与大多数其他动物种群形成了有益的对比，它们不仅是原始呼吸的动物种群，它们已经重新适应了水中的生命，但也有一群人在生命周期中经历了从水到空气的个体转变。该图形回顾总结了有关蜻蜓从水到空气的过渡过程中血液酸碱平衡和通风控制如何变化的当前知识，并突出了一些尚待填补的空白。