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Comparative Physiology Section Newsletter November, 2002

reetings and best wishes from your secretary.   It is now time to make sure your travel reservations are all in place for Experimental Biology 2003 in San Diego April 11 – April 15.  A preview of the schedule is available on-line http://www.the-aps.org/meetings/eb2003/preview.pdf.  Please set aside Sunday, April 133 at 9:00  AM for the August Krogh Distinguished Lectureship by Dr. Peter Scheid.

he EB 2003 Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Section business meeting/luncheon will provide a forum for the presentations of the Scholander Awards and the Young Investigator Awards, and for students and fellows to meet and interact with the Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Peter Scheid of Ruhr University, Bochum.  To order tickets, please contact  Sinya Benyajati, Treasurer, APS Comparative section: siribhinya-benyajati@ouhsc.edu, 405-271-2132. Students and fellows who participate in the Scholander Competition may order tickets free of charge. A limited number of tickets may be available at the EB registration area.  For further infomation, contact Sinya Benyajati, Treasurer, APS Comparative section: siribhinya-benyajati@ouhsc.edu, 405-271-2132.   And remember, we are still in need of donations from our members to help build up the endowment fund to keep this important comparative physiology award activity going in the future. Please send your check made payable to the "American Physiological Society/Comparative Section Restricted Account" to The American Physiological Society, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3991.

As usual, the Comparative Section provides three Young Investigator Awards to candidates who have completed their PhD within the past 10 years, are a member of APS, and are presenting a talk or poster at EB2003 dealing with comparative physiology.  Applicants should submit their abstract, a copy of the abstract submission confirmation page, a one-page CV and a one-page summary of research accomplishments and goals via email to Stan Lindstedt, chair of the Comparative Section (stan.lindstedt@nau.edu) by November 20.  The winners will be notified by email before March 1

The Fall APS meeting in San Diego, The Power of Comparative Physiology: Evolution, Integration, and Application (August 24-28) can only be called an unqualified success.  Jim Hicks (Univ. California, Irvine) spearheaded a truly exciting meeting, “The Power of Comparative Physiology: Evolution, Integration, and Application”.  Ultimately there were five plenary lectures, 19 symposia and 21 poster sessions attended by 554 registrants.  Three awards for best abstract presentation by a graduate student were presented during the Scholander Banquet. Recipients and their respective awards were: The Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology Young Investigator Award presented to John Zehmer, Arizona State University for his presentation entitled “Plasma membrane rafts of rainbow trout are subject to thermal acclimation”; the Society for Experimental Biology Young Investigator Award presented to Scott D. Kirkton, Arizona State University for his presentation entitled “Oxygen delivery problems may reduce jumping performance in larger locusts”, and; the Scholander Award, sponsored by the APS Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Section, presented to Todd E. Gillis, Simon Fraser University for his presentation entitled “Sequence mutations in teleost cardiac troponin C that are permissive of cardiac function at low temperatures”. Each awardee received a cash prize and a one year complimentary subscription to the journal published by the sponsoring society.  Kudo’s to Jim and the other organizers, Al Bennett, Barbara Block, Steve Hand, Don Jackson, and Steve Wood.

The ballots have been counted and new officers are about to step in.  The new Chair-elect is Jim Hicks (Univ. California, Irvine) and the new Program Committee Representative is David Goldstein.  Congratulations to both and thanks to those of who voted!  There was a near tie in the question regarding a name change for the section, the two most popular options were: 1) Comparative and Integrative Physiology and 2) Comparative, Integrative, and Evolutionary Physiology.  We will conduct a run-off vote with the spring election ballot (coming soon).  For general information regarding the place of comparative physiology in the APS, 10% of APS members currently list comparative physiology as an affiliation.  This percentage has remained essentially unchanged since 1988 (average 10.8 ± 0.4%).  Thus, our representation is neither dwindling nor growing.

We were greatly saddened by the recent losses in our field including C. Ladd Prosser, Peter Hochachka, and Bill Calder.

Lloyd Barr, a former student of Ladd Prosser recalls, “Ladd wore his humanity openly. He loved music, doing his gardening and doing experiments.  Since he had so many students, he rarely had a project of his own, but he loved to “help out”.  He was driven hard and wide by his curiosity and his greatest contributions were teaching other people how to ask scientific questions and how to organize answers.  Of course, many of his students made careers out of his questions of them in graduate school.  He was very talented in approaching theoretical issues evolution and was constantly drawn to the subcellular level to seek answers, but when he lectured to his comparative classes the real basis of it all, his wonderment with animals flowed out and captured everyone.”

Regarding Peter Hochachka, Dave Jones wrote in UBC reports, ”Peter was the most peripatetic of scientists. The world was both his laboratory and his lecture hall. He dealt in superlatives; the fastest swimmer, the slowest walker, the fleetest flyer, the highest climber, the deepest diver and, with colleagues and students, he put a girdle round the globe in search of new subjects, spreading the scientific word, igniting ideas with his infectious enthusiasm, and always finding yet further avenues to pursue.”

“Peter was one of a kind. Life was an adventure and cancer was a new challenge, ultimately leading Peter to acknowledge his future assignments in a farewell to his colleagues: ‘to check out the concept of parallel universes and the implications of entanglement.’ That was Peter, and he will be sorely missed. “

Stan Lindstedt writes, “Bill Calder died April 23 of this year after a short battle with leukemia, he was 67. A student of Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, Bill went on to establish himself in not only physiology, but conservation biology as well. However, more that any other attributes, Bill will be remembered as a role model for how science is best done and applied.” 

“Bill was very much the epitome of comparative physiology, working on diverse problems spanning bird lungs and nesting kiwis to the areas that most distinguished his career, effects of body size on structure and function in birds and mammals and his consistent and insightful work on the energetics of his beloved hummingbirds. Bill was a pioneer in many fields, in particular his work on allometry, starting nearly 30 years ago, marked a re-birth of an important field of biology somewhat dormant since Max Kleiber’s work. His book, Size, Function, and Life History remains a must-read for anyone interested in the impact of body size on physiological and ecological processes. Likewise, his work on hummingbirds provided many insights by examining these high-energy machines that are surviving on the brink of daily energy disaster. He carefully documented how torpor was a controlled part of energy budgets in these animals.”

“Bill will be most remembered by his friends, colleagues and students for his wit, humor and especially his character. Like his hummingbirds, Bill lived a life of parsimony but only so he could share more resources with causes in which he deeply believed. The last few years of his life (he had yet to retire) were devoted to conservation biology and putting his biological knowledge into action for society. He loved teaching classes that focused on making students aware of their obligations to our biotic and abiotic world. Above all else, Bill will be remembered as a powerful model for how to live and do science: equal parts of humor, keen observation, hard work and absolute honesty. He will be sadly missed and fondly remembered.”

As many of you are aware, the editorship of American Journal of Physiology changed recently and that includes the emplacement of a new Editor-in-chief for the Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative section of the journal, Dr. Pontus Persson.  Dr. Persson has provided the following greeting for our membership.

Welcome Address to the Members of the Comparative Section

Dear Members of the Comparative Section of the American Physiological Society,

It is a great pleasure to introduce you to many new features and developments of the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. As you have certainly noticed, there have been a number of changes since the new editors were assigned one year ago. It is a great honor to serve for this journal, which is unique since it covers a very large scope of physiological research. This was identified as a great strength of the journal, however, particular care needed to be taken to facilitate the rapid identification of papers in the particular fields. Since over 35 articles appeared per month, not every reader leafed through the entire journal contents to find one of the few articles of his main fields of interest. Thus, the contributions no longer appear under the three subtitles “Regulatory, Integrative or Comparative Physiology”, but are sorted according to their functional aspects. As indicated by the online reading statistics, this measure has been very successful by significantly increasing the number of downloaded articles per month.

The “In Focus” series of papers are rated regularly among the five most read articles per issue. These brief review like editorials outline special fields, which have gathered particularly many recent manuscripts. Dr. Pritchard, who takes care of the majority of papers from your section, has written the In Focus of the coming month on “Comparative Models and Biological Stress”.

During the last few years, roughly 10% of the published articles were from the comparative field. Currently we are receiving a considerably larger amount of your manuscripts, they sum up to around 20% of all submissions. In response to this promising development, we are currently soliciting more editorial board members from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Section. Their number has increased by 50% during the latest 12 months and will continue to rise further.

We very much hope to live up to the faith you have put into our journal and hope that you will continue to maintain or even enhance the reputation of the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology by continuously submitting your very best work.

With my very best regards,

Pontus B. Persson, MD, PhD
Editor-in-Chief

ther upcoming meetings:

Annual Meeting Society for Experimental Biology

Southampton, England 31 March – 4 April, 2003.  For more information see www.sebiology.com

Canadian Society of Zoologists Annual Meeting

 Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario 6 May – 10 May.  For more information see www3.uqar.uquebec.ca/jpellerin/csz/WATERLOO_2003.htm

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting

Toronto, Ontario, 4 January – 8 January.  For information see: www.sicb.org/meetings/2003/index.php3.  

Sixth International Congress of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry

Mount Buller Village, Australia 2 February – 7 February.  For information see: www.zoo.Latrobe.edu.au/iccpb  

And for those who plan ahead:

March 31 - April 5, 2005
From genomes to functions: 35th Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS)

San Diego, California. 31 March – 5 April.  For Information: www.iups2005.org.