Tattersall Lab
Description
The Tattersall lab is a dynamic research environment for the discovery of mechanisms important to animal adaptations to extreme environments. In my lab, we study the Environmental, Evolutionary, and Ecological Physiology of animals. Using a Comparative Physiological approach, we study animals that have naturally evolved physiological defence mechanisms for coping with temperature variation, environmental stress, and extreme environments. We are also particularly interested in understanding how animals utilise temperature to alter their metabolic needs. It is well known that in the cold, metabolic processes slow down which allows hibernating animals to survive long winters without food.
All animals require oxygen to maintain aerobic metabolism and ultimately to survive. Nonetheless, there are many situations such as intertidal zones, ice-covered lakes, high altitude, and underground burrows, where oxygen can be limiting. This is referred to as hypoxia. Animals possess numerous adaptations for coping with these kinds of environmental stresses.
One goal of our research program is to understand how animals control their metabolism and body temperature during times when a high metabolic rate or high body temperature are impossible or inefficient to sustain, such as seen during hypoxia, hypothermia, hibernation, torpor or sleep. For example, when faced with hypoxia, animals actually prefer lower body temperatures and metabolism, implying a neural mechanism to this process. In other words, the brain's thermostat is lowered in hypoxia. Understanding this process will shed light on how animals modify and manipulate body temperature and metabolism and improve our understanding of how the body maintains thermal homeostasis.
Finally, we are interested in the evolution of thermoregulatory responses in animals, with research questions that probe into the origins of homeothermy and the role of thermal heat exchangers in dinosaurs and birds.
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RECENT FACEBOOK POSTS
facebook.comBurning love for our science?
I just found out that an image from our published research has been selected by NSERC's "Science Exposed" contest. This photo is an actual research figure but also a captivating depiction of a novel discovery: namely endothermy in a lizard. The link to vote is here: We would all appreciate your vote. I know some of the other pictures are stunning landscapes and digitally rendered fluorescent images, but our lizard image is the genuine article. [ 34 more words. ] https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/burning-love-for-our-science
Hornbills and Toucans and Beaks…
Avian bills are fascinating structures, having evolved a myriad of forms and functions, as depicted in the montage on the right from: Today a new publication on this subject has been published in PLoS One, highlighting the multi-tasking capacity of form and function. You can find it here. The authors make the major point that hornbills use their bills like toucans do (as radiators of body heat, showing evidence of greater relative blood flow recruitment at warmer temperatures), but that their calculations suggest that the per area rate of heat exchange in the hornbills is less than the toucans. [ 783 more words. ] https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/hornbills-and-toucans-and-beaks
Thermimage for R on CRAN
I've updated the Thermimage package. The recent update includes calculations for modelling heat transfer from radiative and convective heat transfer from the animal to the environment, using temperatures captured from infrared thermal images. The assumption is that the user already has temperature information captured and is simply using R to to analyse temperatures. I am working on scripts for importing FLIR images into R but these are not yet included in Thermimage, since these scripts rely on external applications (EXIFTOOL) that have implementation issues in R. [ 28 more words. ] https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/thermimage-for-r-on-cran
Conference Season
It's been a busy two weeks in the lab, courtesy of my hard working graduate students. Susan, Justin and Anne presented their thesis research at the Ontario Ecology and Ethology Colloquium last week. Here are some screen shots of their abstract titles. Then, this past week, the lab attended the Canadian Society of Zoologists conference to present our research. Justin and Susan represented the lab work at Brock, while Cayleih Robertson (PhD student of Grant McClelland at McMaster) presented her work (a collaboration I'm happy to be part of). [ 94 more words. ] https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/conference-season
Thesis Defence a Success!
Congratulations to Ian Black for successfully defending his MSc thesis from research in my lab. Ian's thesis was entitled "Orientation Preference and Behavioural Thermoregulatory Coordination in Pogona vitticeps". Many thanks to Dr. Jacqueline Litzgus (Laurentian University) for being his external examiner and giving a fair and comprehensive assessment of his work. Also thanks to Dr. Joffre Mercier, Dr. Robert Carlone and Dr. [ 63 more words. ] https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/thesis-defence-a-success/
Write-up in the JEB!
Our research has just been nicely highlighted by Colleen Farmer in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Check it out here: https://tattersalllab.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/write-up-in-the-jeb
Tattersall Lab (TEMP)
Migrating the lab webpage away from the university server to wordpress. Wish me luck!
Tattersall Lab
From a colleague's lab in Scotland, a great video on using thermal imaging to assess "stress" in birds. So glad he wrote this, since it was on my to-do list to do. Now I can scratch that off my list! http://www.jove.com/video/53184/thermal-imaging-to-study-stress-non-invasively-in-unrestrained-birds
Reptile thermogenesis and the origins of endothermy
This was just accepted today for publication... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0944200616300137
Infrared thermography: A non-invasive window into thermal physiology
A new paper from the lab. Sorry for the paywall. This is the first time I've published a paper with a picture of one of my pets. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643316300435
Ramphastos Ramblings: Thermal Camera Showdown - FLIR ONE vs. FLIR SC660
http://ramphastosramblings.blogspot.ca/2016/03/thermal-camera-showdown-flir-one-vs.html
Timeline Photos
MSc Opportunity to work with a good colleague of mine in Maine!
Quiz
