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Respiratory Control in Insects: Integration from the Gene to the Organism
Sponsored by APS Comparative & Evolutionary Physiology Section
Oxidative Stress/Hypoxia Track

The insect tracheal system has been of interest to physiologists since August Krogh’s early work.  The tracheal respiratory system is responsible for insects having the highest mass-specific metabolic rates in the animal kingdom, amazing ecological diversity, and helping insects recover from anoxia.  Long thought to be a simple diffusion based system, more recent work has shown that insect gas exchange is complex and shares many physiological and developmental similarities with vertebrate systems, for example, fibroblast-like growth factors contribute to the regulation of tracheal branching.  This symposium brings together researchers from varying fields (molecular genetics, developmental biology, physiology, and biomechanics) that are utilizing innovative experimental techniques to shed insight into the physiology of the tracheal system.  Their findings, which are reported in current issues of Science and Nature, provide not only evolutionary answers as to the physiological design of respiratory systems, but also suggest that insect respiration can serve as a model for biomedical applications in vertebrate respiratory systems.