Readings for Physiological Ecology
Dr. Peter Frederick, September 4, 2009
Physiological ecology is a huge and diverse field and any attempt to encompass even main principles in a
short group of readings (or a 3-hour lecture) is madness. So the readings below are designed primarily
to give you a flavor of the breadth of things going on in the field currently.
A word of caution on the Wingfield article. This is long (30 pages!) and at first glance, incredibly involved
in giving commonplace processes bizarre new names. However, in the end Wingfield builds a novel and
very durable framework for thinking about various forms of stress, the main issue in physiology. His
conceptual model also deals neatly with some sticky issues about “good and bad” stress. Try to focus
on the parts of this paper that deal with conceptual issues – allostatic load, unpredictable vs. predictable
stressors, and the model of how animals respond with hormones to stressors. The actual biochemical
means of response are less important for now, and you can skim those sections. So try to play along
with the naming – just in order to see how the conceptual model works.
Ecology is a science of examples – and each of the other articles are examples: of energetics and how to
work with measuring costs and benefits (Atkinson et al., Williams et al.,) how to deal with changing
timing of food and reproduction with global change (Cresswell and McCleery) and the widespread
problem of endocrine disruption (Minlnes et al.). You should read these well enough to describe the
main findings to a non-biologist at a bar. In other words, not every detail, but the main points.
Readings:
Atkinson, P. W., A. J. Baker, K. A. Bennett, N. A. Clark, J. A. Clark, K. B. Cole, A. Dekinga, A. Dey, S. Gillings,
P. M. Gonzalez, K. Kalasz, C. D. T. Minton, J. Newton, L. J. Niles, T. Persma, R. A. Robinson, and H. P.
Sitters. 2007. Rate of mass gain and energy deposition in red knot on their final staging site is both
time-and condition-dependent. Journal of Applied Ecology 44:885-895.
Cresswell, W., and R. McCleery. 2003. How great tits maintain synchronization of their hatch date with
food supply in response to long-term variability in temperature. Journal of Animal Ecology 72:356-366.
Milnes, M. R., D. S. Bermudez, T. A. Bryan, T. M. Edwards, M. P. Gunderson, I. L. V. Larkin, B. C. Moore,
and L. L. Guillette, Jr. 2006. Contaminant-induced feminization and demasculinization of
nonmammalian vertebrate males in aquatic environments. Environmental Research 100:3-17.
Williams, T. M., J. A. Estes, D. F. Doak, and A. M. Springer. 2004. Killer appetites: assessing the role of
predators in ecological communities. Ecology 85:3373-3384.
Wingfield, J. C. 2004. Allostatic load and life cycles: Implications for neuroendocrine control
mechanisms. Pages 303-342 in J. Schulkin, ed. Allostasis, homeostasis, and the costs of physiological
adaptation. Cambridge University Press, NY.