Conceptual Breakthroughs in Comparative Animal Physiology

·
· Academic Press
Ebook
276
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Comparative Animal Physiology tells a story of innate human curiosity about the natural world, and a deeply creative discipline, shaped by varied environments, unusual organisms, elegant experiments, and the persistent effort to understand how animals work and why they work the way they do—along the way discovering "adaptations and mechanisms of the most surprising character".Written by two leading experts in the field, each chapter reflects on the origins of ideas and the approach of turning natural diversity into experimental design. From deserts to oceans, from the anoxia-tolerant animals to endothermic insects, from deep-diving mammals to the integration of "omics," each chapter follows the discoveries and people who were compelled to modify their view of "what life can do." The chapters also highlight the long-term influence of key conceptual breakthroughs, demonstrating how insights from comparative physiology have shaped not only the field itself but also, ecology, evolution, and engineering.As scientists strive to understand the complexity of living systems, the book underscores the inherent integrative nature of comparative physiology, revealing a process that strives to connect genes to organisms and organisms to environments, and providing a framework for understanding the diversity of life. This is an essential resource for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers interested in physiology with its comprehensive synopsis on the field's foundational history and significant advances. - Provides a single-source, historical overview of the field of comparative animal physiology - Examines more than 70 significant achievements in the history of comparative animal physiology - Written in a comprehensive and easy-to-read format
Conceptual Breakthroughs in Comparative Animal Physiology tells a story of innate human curiosity about the natural world, and a deeply creative discipline, shaped by varied environments, unusual organisms, elegant experiments, and the persistent effort to understand how animals work and why they...

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About the author

Dr. James Hicks is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Irvine. As a broadly trained integrative physiologist, Jim is internationally recognized for his research on the comparative and evolutionary physiology of the vertebrate cardiopulmonary system. He has authored more than 120 scientific articles on subjects ranging from the evolution of the vertebrate heart to physiological responses to microgravity and sports-related concussion. His research has been widely featured in the news media. In addition to his academic work, Jim has served as a consultant to the television and film industries, most notably as the life-science consultant to Disney/Pixar on the Academy Award–winning film WALL-E. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physiological Society, and the California Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he received the American Physiological Society's August Krogh Distinguished Lectureship and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University, Denmark.Dr. Tobias Wang is a professor of Zoophysiology at Aarhus University, and Editor-in-Chief of Acta Physiologica. Tobias has studied respiratory adaptations in air-breathing fish, the high blood pressure in giraffes, digestion in snakes when they digest colossal meals, and has been fascinated by the physiological adaptation that enable animals to thrive in extreme environments, but also the use of exotic animals as models for human diseases. He has authored more than 300 scientific publications and more than 100 popular articles, and he often appears in the popular press. Tobias is a member of the presidium of The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and serves on the national committee that oversees animal experiments in Denmark. He has given the Krogh lectures in both the American Physiological Society and The International Union of Physiological Sciences, as well as the Bidder lecture in Society for Experimental Biology and the Burgh-Daly lecture in The Physiological society. He is on editorial boards of many journals in comparative physiology and has collaborators on most continents.
Dr. James Hicks is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Irvine. As a broadly trained integrative physiologist, Jim is internationally recognized for his research on the comparative and evolutionary physiology of the vertebrate ...

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