Fri, March 22, 2019 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORATORY (AERL). Speaker: Dr. Katie Marshall
Assistant Professor, UBC Zoology
Location: AERL Theatre (Rm. 120)
The rocky intertidal is a place of extremes: temperature, oxygen concentration, and salinity all shift with tide and season. But while there's been significant interest in how intertidal animals survive the highest temperature in the heat of the day (and how climate change might add even more pressure), it's easy to forget what happens in the cold and dark of midwinter. Invertebrates that live in the intertidal zone must also cope with freezing stress, and have developed a myriad of ways to survive this unique challenge. Understanding some of the mechanisms behind freeze tolerance and their limits can not only add to our limited understanding of freeze tolerance mechanisms broadly, it can also help us predict what might happen to intertidal animals as climate warms.
Dr. Marshall completed her PhD in insect cold tolerance at the University of Western Ontario with Brent Sinclair. She then took up a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at UBC with Chris Harley to student cold tolerance in intertidal invertebrates. Following this, she began a faculty position in Geographic Physiological Ecology at the University of Oklahoma, then moved her lab to the Comparative Physiology group at UBC where she is focusing on mechanisms of freeze tolerance.