About the Authors

Niraj Kumar

Affiliation Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Gerald R. Palmer

Affiliation Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Vishal Shah

Affiliation Department of Biology, Dowling College, Oakdale, New York, United States of America

Virginia K. Walker

walkervk@queensu.ca

Affiliations Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Competing Interests

VS is an Academic Editor of PLoS ONE. GP is currently working in research and development for Qubit Systems, Kingston, Ontario, and was on leave from that position during the time that the respiration experiments were undertaken using Qubit equipment. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: GP VS VW. Performed the experiments: NK GP VS VW. Analyzed the data: NK GP VS VW. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: GP VS VW. Wrote the paper: NK GP VS VW.