Message from the DCPB Leadership

Jon Harrison, Chair (chair.dcpb@sicb.org); Jason Podrabsky, Chair-Elect (chairelect.dcpb@sicb.org); Ken Welch, Past Chair; Caroline Williams, Secretary (secretary.dcpb@sicb.org); Kate Wilsterman, Secretary-Elect; Alex Gerson, Program Officer (dpo.dcpb@sicb.org); Lisa Treidel, Student/Postdoctoral Representative

Happy Fall, to all our DCPB members! 

We are all preparing for the upcoming SICB annual meeting in Seattle, January 2-6, 2024. It is shaping up to be the largest SICB meeting ever, and we are looking forward to connecting with old friends, making new ones, and hearing about all the exciting research going on in DCPB. 

Thank you to all who participated in the Spring elections, particularly those who stood for office. A vibrant division relies on having a strong pool of candidates for each position, and we are lucky to have Dr. Kate Wilsterman coming on board as Secretary-Elect. Kate will take over as Secretary after the 2024 annual meeting, replacing Caroline Williams. 

Kate is an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, whose research involves ecological and evolutionary physiology with a focus on animal reproduction. Her lab’s recent PNAS paper on adaptation to high elevation in high altitude deer mice is a tour de force; check it out! Kate is looking forward to working with DCPB membership over the next two years and would love to meet more of our membership in Seattle! Please come introduce yourself if you see Kate around the conference, and/or say hello at our divisional meeting! If there is any general news you would like to share with the DCPB membership, including job ads, postdoctoral positions, and opportunities for students, please contact Caroline and Kate at Secretary.DCPB@sicb.org.

SICB Annual Meeting 2024

Alex Gerson, Program Officer (dpo.dcpb@sicb.org)

Hi everyone! I have just returned from the Program Committee meeting, and I’m really excited for all the DCPB sessions we have scheduled.  We had almost 200 abstracts organized around a broad range of topics within comparative physiology and biochemistry, and I’m sure each day of the meeting will offer something interesting for each of you.  I hope you enjoy the sessions.  Of particular interest, we will have a dedicated session for our DCPB Best Student Presentation finalists on Thursday January 4th, followed by our Best Student Poster competition the same afternoon.  We are also co-sponsoring the Bartholomew Award Social – please plan to attend after the Bart lecture on Friday, January 7 in the Convention Center Atrium!  We also have a number of great DCPB-sponsored symposia this year.

DCPB-Sponsored Symposia

• The Scale of Resilience; Mechanisms of Recovery Across Biological Organisms
  Organizers: Emily LeSage Hall and Corinne Richards-Zawacki
  Date: Thursday, January 4

Despite a strong theoretical foundation and efforts to model complex system responses to disturbance, resilience biology is still a nascent field of research facing major challenges. For instance, resilience studies often use measures of resilience that are not transferable to other systems, making establishing common currencies a priority for developing a generalizable framework. Living systems also experience a wide range of disturbances (such as short-term heat waves vs long term climate warming) which can lead to opposing outcomes, thus, there is a need to draw parallels among perturbations among similar systems to develop a flexible framework that considers variation in disturbance type, magnitude, and duration. Lastly, many studies have isolated resilience attributes at specific biological scales, yet linking mechanisms across scales has remained a challenge. As technological advances allow scientists to generate ‘big data’ from molecular to community levels, access ecological monitoring remotely and in real time, as well as model, analyze, and disseminate complex biological data, now is an opportune time to establish a biological resilience framework that enables comparisons across scales, stressors, and systems.

• Evolution, Physiology and Biomechanics of Insect Flight
  Organizers: Lisa Triedel, Jon Harrison, Caroline Williams
  Date: Friday, January 5, followed by a lunchtime workshop (open to all) on January 6. 

The evolution of powered flight is recognized as a key adaptation explaining the unparalleled success and diversification of insects. While there was a strong tradition of integrative studies in insect flight during the 1970s-2000s, the field has recently fragmented leaving the ecological and evolutionary aspects of flight poorly integrated with mechanistic and biomechanical perspectives. This symposium and workshop will bring together researchers working on the evolution, ecology, physiology, and biomechanics of flight to stimulate integration of these fields to answer questions about how and why flight arose and is maintained in insects. 

• Recent Advances in the Mechanistic Understanding of Avian Responses to Environmental Challenges
  Organizers: Alexander Gerson, Maria Stager, Cory Elowe
  Date: Saturday, January 6

Endothermic species have evolved various strategies to maximize survival in highly variable or extreme environments. Birds are no exception, as they are among the most widely distributed endotherms on the planet, living in all manner of inhospitable environments. While in many cases the organismal requirements for success are similar, the underlying mechanisms, physiological requirements, and selection on those traits, can differ significantly, and their influence and impact from an ecological or evolutionary perspective can as well.  

Recent advances in the lab and field have led to new discoveries at numerous levels of organization, providing insight into the evolved mechanisms that enable birds to overcome physiological challenges of all kinds, including extreme long distance flight, heat and cold, osmotic challenges, low oxygen, or immune challenges. It is the goal of this symposium to highlight these recent advances and facilitate discussion comparing and contrasting avian responses to various environmental challenges in an attempt to make and deepen connections, find common themes, and discuss future directions in the field.

George A. Bartholomew Award Winner

Each year the Division of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry recognizes an early career investigator for distinguished contributions to comparative physiology and biochemistry or to related fields of functional and integrative biology. The award is generously sponsored by Sable Systems International, and named in honor of distinguished comparative physiologist George A. Bartholomew (known as Bart by his colleagues and students). 

This year’s George A. Bartholomew Award goes to Dr. Eleanor Caves, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at University of California, Santa Barbara. Eleanor will give her keynote address on Friday, January 7, followed by a reception co-sponsored by DCPB and DEDE. Congratulations to Eleanor!

Eleanor’s research lies at the intersection of behavioral ecology, animal vision, and evolution. Eleanor’s primary research focuses on marine cleaning interactions, and she also studies a broad range of taxa to ask questions regarding how organisms perceive their visual world, and how that perception influences both signals and behaviors. In particular, Eleanor’s research focuses on how animals perceive, recognize, and interact with other individuals in contexts like mate choice, mutualism, and mimicry. 

Research Spotlight

DCPB member Dr. Allison Littmer recently graduated with her PhD from the  University of Arkansas in June, and started a post-doctoral research fellowship at Ohio Wesleyan University. Allison’s dissertation research showed that stable temperature treatments inconsistently project performance of Sceloporus lizards in cyclical thermal regimes, and found interactive effects of warming nighttime temperatures and altered prey availability on individual performance and population persistence. Allison can’t wait for SICB 2024, to hear about new research in physiology and meet new folks in the field!

Science Fails

The only thing sure about science is that experiments will fail! This can be discouraging, but ultimately even a “failed” experiment often teaches us something. Even experienced scientists still experience science fails, so wear them as a badge of pride! Your success as a scientist will be determined not by the experiments that work out perfectly, but from how you respond to the inevitable failures! For your enjoyment, we bring to you a “science fail” sent in by eminent DCPB Chair, Jon Harrison. 

Bees fail to beat the heat

This summer we tested the effect of a mitotoxic fungicide on honey colonies. 40 colonies were placed in tents, and provided with sugar water, water, and pollen. The pollen contained four concentrations of (0 to 10x field-relevant) fungicide. Colony populations and foraging behaviors were assessed weekly. This was a huge setup. All colonies suppressed reproduction and nearly died, so we had to let them out of the tents to save them. At least partially, this was due to our hottest summer on record (54 days over 110 ℉/ 43 ℃)). We did find that the control colonies were more likely to survive, but this was, in many ways, an epic experimental failure. In the attached thermal image of a honey bee hive in one of these tents, you can see the blue signature of the cool air being expelled from the hive by the fanners desperately trying to keep their brood and queen cool (photo credit: Yash Raka).