Environmental Physiology of Animals

In this course, students will have an opportunity to investigate the diversity of physiological responses exhibited by animals to various environmental challenges. These responses have been forged over evolutionary time and yet also reveal varying degrees of plasticity during the lives of individual animals. We will read the primary literature focusing in particular, on animal responses to extreme environments. Students will also derive and conduct their own research.

Syllabus

Essential questions in environmental physiology concern delineating the mechanisms and fitness consequences of complex phenotypes. The major departure points are included in the first 3 papers below:

Conservation physiology
Beneficial acclimation hypothesis 
Phenotypic flexibility

Particular Systems

Thermal sensitivity of Drosophila melanogaster: evolutionary responses
Thermal ecology of dragonflies
Thermal biology and water relations in caterpillars
Costs of plasticity: desiccation and immune response in frogs
Physiological and behavioural correlates of life-history variation: tropical vs temperate wrens
Timing of metamorphosis in a freshwater crustacean
Effects of fish chemical cues on the interactions between tadpoles and crayfish
Flight and thermoregulation in moths were shaped by predation from bats
Feeding ecology in elephants and hippos
Fighting success in crayfish: temperature and plasticity
Lactation costs in degus
Sex determination in a lizard
Ontogeny of snake locomotion
Lactation in a seal
Tradeoffs in lactation
Hibernation and immune response
Temperature regulation in burying beetles
Temperature, genetic variation, and body size in flies
Osmotic regulation in fruit flies
Cat lactation
Respiration in migrating crabs
Shift in diet: cannibalistic salamanders
Diving physiology in dolphins
Heart rate and diving in elephant seals
Larval stress & adult stress

Final paper: Phenotypic plasticity and the evolution of species

Environmental Physiology of Animals: Guidelines for Proposal
Due no later than 4/4/07 (in class)
Late papers not accepted

Guidelines for poster
Due no later than noon on May 28

Guidelines for final paper
Due no later than noon on May 28

Presentations of 15 to 20 minutes on Friday, May 23 and Tuesday, May 27