Teaching

Basic principles of animal behavior and the scientific process, including genetic, neural and physiological basis of behavior, behavioral ecology, and behavioral responses to a changing environment. Proximate and ultimate mechanisms controlling the behavior of animals including humans.

An introduction to the physiology of adaptation to the physical and biotic environments, including animal energetics, biology of body size, and physiological constraints on animal life history.

Fundamentals of vertebrate physiology, emphasizing the functional and homeostatic controls that regulate nerve and muscle tissue, and the cardiovascular, respiratory, renal and endocrine systems. Three hours of class and three hours of laboratory.

Students will learn how evolution has shaped physiological adaptations of vertebrates to the environment. Topics may include adaptations that regulate and integrate water and energy balance, immune defenses adaptations that help organisms deal with disease challenges, and endocrine adaptations that help organisms deal with changes in their environment and that coordinate life-cycle events. Adaptations will be discussed within a comparative and integrative framework. Students will learn techniques to ask ecological physiology questions.

An in-depth discussion of human diseases from an evolutionary perspective. Topics include proximate versus ultimate causation, reproduction, nutritional and metabolic adaptations, defense, behavior and social organization, evolutionary principles applied to medical practice. Three hours of discussion of papers and topics.

In this course, we explore biology across levels of organization, ranging from biological molecules to ecosystems. We cover critical biological concepts including the form and function of biological molecules; the life cycle of a cell; key concepts in cellular physiology; organismal physiology including cardiovascular physiology, metabolism, photosynthesis, digestion and immunity; and ecological concepts including population growth, community interactions, energy and matter flow, and global change. This is a large-lecture class that is team taught course and I teach the organismal and ecological sections.

This was a 2-credit special-topics course that I developed and taught at the University of Nevada, Reno for the Fall 2014 semester. The combined lecture material with reading and discussion of primary literature to explore how physiology mediates ecology and life histories of wildlife and how knowledge of physiology informs management decisions.

Course announcement