Ecological (or environmental) Physiology focuses on physiological diversity in relation to the environments in which organisms live. This course covers how animals move and function in terms of locomotion and how locomotion is powered. It explores how animals acclimate, adapt or evolve to the physiological challenges of their environment. Considering the current anthropogenic changes we are observing, it is crucial that we understand and know how to measure the effects environmental change places on an organism’s physiological capacity to tolerate, or adapt. We cover function in extreme environments and settings such as high temperature and hypoxia (e.g. diving air-breathing animals, and animals at high altitude). We also cover how animals extract energy from food.
This course explores four things that limit life; 1) oxygen (hypoxia and anoxia), 2) temperature, 3) energy flow as inputs (food-anabolism) and outputs (catabolism), and 4) water and ion regulation (pH desiccation and freezing). The adaptive and evolutionary strategies employed by a range of species in response to these, are considered. We discuss aquatic species (reflecting the research interests of participating staff), and terrestrial physiology (birds, mammals and insects). The course aims to meet the needs of people with ecological interests wishing to apply an experimental approach to solving problems in environmental biology. We attempt to achieve these aims through the use of research-based teaching with a range of laboratories from fish muscle structure, hydrodynamics and propulsion in fish, heart function in glass shrimps to digestive enzymes of gastropods. We offer insights into specialised research fields such as ecotoxicology.
The practical work in this course involves laboratory work. While we do not to use any live vertebrates in the course, we do use live invertebrates (generally crustaceans and gastropods). For the crustacean work we test heart function non-invasively and we expose them to different factors such as different temperatures, CO2 or O2 levels.
This course feeds into pathways of ecology, evolutionary biology, marine, freshwater and animal biology and to a lesser extent molecular biology. It will help prepare a student for work in physiological research, ecology, physiological conservation, ecotoxicology, education, marine biology, aquaculture, zoo management and fisheries. This course also feeds into an active postgraduate groups in Biological Sciences.