Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

This request for instrumentation is from 4 researchers in the Atlantic Provinces who study how aquatic animals regulate their metabolism and physiology to thrive in stressful environments. Environmental stressors like high temperatures or low oxygen levels limit the amount of energy available to an animal, impairing its ability to perform critical activities (e.g. avoid predators, capture prey). Under specific conditions, repeat exposures to sub-lethal stressors can activate pathways that enhance energy availability at the expense of non-essential processes. Understanding the mechanisms underlying these processes and their consequences to the animal will allow us to better predict the impacts of climate change on aquatic fauna. *This application is for a state of the art isolated muscle physiology and metabolism system and a bank of intermittent flow swim tunnel respirometers. These instruments will allow physiological performance and aerobic metabolism to be measured in aquatic animals at multiple biological scales; the whole animal and isolated muscle level. Together, these techniques will enable the researchers to identify how compensatory cellular and metabolic responses impact physiological function at the tissue and whole animal levels. *The requested infrastructure would greatly enhance the analytical capacity of the applicant's research programs, relieve considerable burdens on existing equipment, and permit the development of novel lines of inquiry. The research enabled by these instruments would support the training of numerous highly qualified personnel and further Canada's research efforts in multiple fields including: the responses of aquatic animals to climate change; the conservation of imperilled wild Atlantic salmon populations; the adaptation of energetically efficient contractile mechanisms in cephalopod muscles. *