Environmental Physiology – PCB 6365

Meeting Time & Place: Tues & Thurs 2:30 – 3:45 PM, Room 215 Biological Sciences

Instructor: John F. Weishampel, Associate Professor of Biology

Office: Room 140A Biological Sciences; 823-6634 (has voice mail)

e-mail: jweisham@mail.ucf.edu

Instructor web-site: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~jweisham

Class web site: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~jweisham/pcb6365/class_slides.htm

Office Hours: It will be best to e-mail or call me to setup a formal appointment. But I

am generally available around my office (≈8:30-5:00) to answer any questions.

However, we will need to schedule minimally one formal appointment to discuss the progress of your presentation. Official drop-in office hours will be posted on my web site once I have them figured out.

Course Description: This course is designed to provide biologically oriented students

with the basic concepts of environmental physiology. However, environmental

physiology and it’s close relatives, physiology ecology, ecophysiology,

comparative physiology, have been defined numerous ways (see attachment). Because of the varied interests of the audience, I will try to present material that is relevant to animals and plants, terrestrial and aquatic. This course will be divided into two parts. The first part, taught by me, is focused on the physical micro-environments in which organisms reside. The second part, taught by you, will describe how organisms respond to a host of environmental stresses.

Course Prerequisites: Students should have taken minimally the introductory ecology

course. Students should be familiar with basic algebra, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, and physiology. Students will be required to develop a PowerPoint-based lecture; hence some understanding of computer hardware and software is required. Handouts of PowerPoint presentations will be made for the audience.

Course Objectives: Given the enormity of environmental permutations and subsequent

physiological responses, as well as my limited knowledge of animal physiology, my goal is that students (and instructor) will become familiar with how some of the major environmental factors influence short-term acclimations and long-term evolutionary adaptations. Moreover, students will be able to interpret effects of environmental factors which have not been explicitly taught based on the laws of physics, e.g., energy and mass transfer.

Course Texts: There are no required textbooks, in part, because I am making up this

course as I go along. Not really, but I have not found a text that addresses all the

topics that I want to cover in a manner that makes sense to me. However, there

are several textbooks from which I will be extracting information. Two, An

Introduction to Biophysics by Campbell and Norman and Life’s Devices by Vogel are available at the bookstore. Purchase none, one, or both of them if you like. I will also be using Biophysical Ecology by Gates, Principles of Integrative Environmental Physiology by Folk, Riedesel, and Thrift, and others from the library.

Course Schedule^†:

Date	Topic
Jan 9 & 11	Course Introduction & Scale
Jan 16 & 18	Light Environment – Radiation Basics & Fluxes
Jan 23 & 25	Spectral Properties of Plants and Animals
Jan 30 & Feb 1	Thermal Environment – Temperature
Feb 6^* & 8	Heat Transfer & Conductance; Energy Budgets
Feb 13 & 15	Water (Flow, Viscosity) & Air (Wind) Environments
Feb 20 & 22	Gravity & Miscellany (Midterm will be handed out)
Feb 27 & Mar 1	Student Presentations (4)
Mar 6^* & 8^*	Instructor will be out of town; follow the Spring Break instructions.
Spring Break	Explore your own thermoregulatory response due to radiative flux.
Mar 20 & 22	Student Presentations (4)
Mar 27 & 29	Student Presentations (4)
Apr 3 & 5	Student Presentations (4)
Apr 10 & 12	Student Presentations (4)
Apr 17 & 19	Student Presentations (2) & Physiological Effects of Global Change
Tues, Apr 24	Final Exam 1:00-3:50 PM

^†This syllabus is a work in progress and may be subject to alterations.

*Dates instructor will most likely be out of town.

Student Responsibilities:

Readings – Since there is no formal text, there are will be no specific chapters assigned.

There may be occasional handouts to be read from the instructor or the presenting students. However, the absence of a text means that if you require supplemental information on lecture materials you may need to purchase texts in the bookstore or find the sources in the library that I used to develop the lecture. Problems for the midterm may be derived from or related to problems found in the texts available in the bookstore.

Class Presentation – Each student will give a 35-minute presentation on a particular

environmental physiology topic tailored to the student’s interests. Attached to the syllabus is a list of general, suggested topics. Students may develop more focused topics or tangentially related topics. To ensure that these presentations cover information relevant to the course and that the quality and substance of the presentation is at the level of a graduate course, there will be a review of the presentation outline and gathered information such as bibliographic references, graphs, and examples minimally two weeks prior to the presentation date. These presentations will require library work (perhaps involving interlibrary loans); the sooner you get started, the better.

Exams – There will be a take-home midterm and an in-class final exam. The questions

will be problem-oriented. These will be open-note (quasi-real world) exams.

The midterm will be derived from material that I present during the first half of the course. The final exam will be derived from the student presentations.

Additional Assignments – For each student presentation, each member of the audience

will be required to evaluate the presenter on particular points and write one question. These can be submitted weekly to me via e-mail. These questions can take two forms. One form is a question that you would like to ask the presenter, but given the limited time you could not. The other form is what would be an appropriate final exam question, i.e., requiring a higher level of knowledge or synthesis of information. I will be evaluating these questions based on their substance and depth of comprehension of presented material.

Performance Evaluation -

Student Presentation - 30%

Mid Term Examination - 25%

Final Examination - 25%

Assignments - 20%

Grading will follow something akin to the 90-100=A, 80-90=B, 70-80=C, etc. scale.

Suggested General Presentation Topics:

Terrestrial animals in cold

Hibernation

Aquatic animals in cold

Plants in cold (e.g., examples hardiness, freeze tolerance)

Terrestrial animals in dry, heat

Estivation

Plants in dry, heat

Terrestrial animals in humid, heat

Aquatic animals in heat (not referring to a period of sexual excitement)

Plants in humid, heat (e.g., saturated wetland conditions)

Animals in toxic (e.g., polluted) aquatic, soil, or atmospheric environments

Animals in high CO₂ environments

Animals in osmotically challenging environments (e.g., aquatic)

Animals in various radiant (e.g., high UV, strong seasonal, ionizing) environments

Plants in toxic (e.g., polluted) aquatic, soil, or atmospheric environments

Plants in high CO₂ environments

Plants in various radiant (e.g., high UV, strong seasonal, ionizing) environments

Plants in osmotically challenging environments (e.g., halophytic)

Animals in high altitudes

Plants in high altitudes

Animals in high pressures (e.g., deep oceans)

Animals in caloric deficient environments

Plants in nutrient poor environments

Plants in turbulent environments (e.g., wind, tidal)

Animals in turbulent environments (e.g., wind, tidal)

Animals in highly competitive situations

Plants in highly competitive situations

These topics are merely suggestions if you have a related pet interest that you believe falls within the realm of environmental physiology (aquatic, terrestrial, plant, animal, microbe, etc.), let me know and I will determine whether or not it is appropriate for this course. One thing that always concerns students is order of presentation. Who will go first? Who will go last? The order will be established after the topics are chosen based on my perception of organizing a course. You have two weeks to choose or derive an acceptable topic. To seek presentation approval, e-mail or talk to me about your topic.

If chosen topics overlap excessively, I may ask you to chose another. Thus, act soon.