Most animals live in environments that vary on some scale - temperatures change daily and seasonally; salinities change with rainstorms; even water levels change with the tides. Organisms must be able to respond behaviourally and physiologically to these changes in their environment, to maintain high levels of performance that keep them alive and reproducing.
In my lab, we study how changes in temperature influence animal performance. We focus on temperature because it varies naturally over days and months, and now with global climate change, over years as well. Human developments also affect temperature at a local scale - creating urban 'heat-islands' that get - and stay - hotter than surrounding areas. Understanding how animals respond to temperature is key to their conservation.
What is acclimation?
Acclimation is a general term for the physiological changes that occur in organisms in response to changes in the environment. Fundamentally, it's assumed that these changes allow performance to be enhanced - or at least maintained - in the new environment. Acclimation can be measured at many different levels, from whole-animal performance down to biochemical reactivity rates; and looking at multiple levels within a study allows us to get a complete picture of how animals deal with environmental change within their lifetimes.
What is adaptation?
Adaptation refers to genetic changes that occur across generations or among populations, in response to long-term changes in climatic conditions like temperature.
Why are adaptation and acclimation important?
Global climates are changing, and conservation of species depends on understanding how they will respond to these changes both in the short- and long-term. Our research examines the behavioural and physiological changes that animals make when temperatures change, the heritability of acclimation abilities among generations, and the difference in thermal tolerances and physiology among spatially-variant populations of the same species.
Our aims in this field
We want to understand
- how performance relates to temperature
- how behaviour and physiology are modified in new or changed environments
- whether these modifications are heritable
- how populations differ in the ability to adjust to new temperatures