Tuesday Talk via Zoom – A Global Comparison of Squirrel Temperature Regulation Physiology with Eric Brown, PhD Candidate

“In their histories as biological disciplines, both physiology and ecology have offered revolutionary integrations of evolutionary, cellular, and molecular theory in biology. They connect the individual organism to all other organisms and aim to identify and explain the processes that underlie the diversity we see in nature. Today, a further integration of physiology and ecology seeks to understand how the evolution of organisms coincides with the evolution of environments and why certain individuals, populations, species, and clades respond in innumerably peculiar ways to environmental change.

Squirrels in their near-global distribution and great ecological diversity have been invaluable to investigations of eco-physiological questions. While historically a model for studying hibernation and other forms of torpid heterothermy (states of metabolic suppression and body temperature flexibility in endotherms) in non-tropical climates, squirrels have revealed a great wealth of knowledge about how mammals produce and regulate their own body heat through metabolic means. Through squirrels and now a great many other heterotherms, explanations about how, when, and why endothermy and mammals evolved have gained progressively firmer purchase on solid ground. Despite this, the historical focus on active heterothermy via metabolic suppression has neglected the great majority of squirrels, especially geographically.

Present tropical biodiversity and the tropical-like environment of early mammals begs the question: why generate your own body heat if you can rely on your environment to do it for you? Again, squirrels may provide some key clues about why we mammals do what we do. As a member of the Levesque Lab at UMaine, I spend much of my time dripping sweat on washed-out jungle paths in Sarawak, Malaysia on the island of Borneo chasing squirrels to better understand how tropical mammals handle the heat.”

One link for the whole series via Zoom:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83922205228

Merryspring is your community nature center offering walking trails, cultivated gardens, wildlife, and ecology and horticulture educational programs all year round. The park is located at the end of Conway Road, just off of Route 1 in Camden behind Hannaford Shopping Plaza. For more information on this program, please contact info@merryspring.org or call 207-236-2239.