FEATURED FACULTY
Dr. Brent Sinclair
Insects at Low Temperatures
Visit Dr. Sinclair's web site
PhD, 2001 University of Otago
BSc(Hons), 1997 University of Otago
I did my BSc(Hons) and PhD research in Zoology with Dr David Wharton at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where I worked on the ecology and physiology of alpine and Antarctic arthropods. I then moved on to a three-year postdoc in the SPACE Lab at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where I worked on many aspects of the evolutionary and ecological physiology of arthropods in a number of habitats, including the Cederberg and Drakensberg mountains, sub-Antarctic Marion Island, and Cape Hallett on the Antarctic Continent. I then spent 18 months as a postdoctoral scholar in stress genomics in the Roberts Lab at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA, where I investigated molecular responses to cold stress in Drosophila melanogaster and developed the Drosophila cryopreservation project. After a brief summer in Cornwall, England at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation, I began at Western in August 2006.
Selected Publications
Sinclair, B.J. & Chown, S.L. (2006) Caterpillars benefit from thermal ecosystem engineering by Wandering Albatrosses on sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Biology Letters 2: 51-54.
Sinclair, B.J. & Roberts, S.P. (2005) Acclimation, shock and hardening in the cold. Journal of Thermal Biology 30: 557-562.
Sinclair, B.J. & Chown, S.L. (2005) Climatic variability and hemispheric differences in insect cold tolerance: Support from southern Africa. Functional Ecology 19: 214-221.
Sinclair, B.J. & Chown, S.L. (2005) Deleterious effects of repeated cold exposure in a sub-Antarctic caterpillar. Journal of Experimental Biology 208: 869-879.
Chown, S.L., Sinclair, B.J., Leinaas, H.P. & Gaston, K.J. (2004) Hemispheric asymmetries in biodiversity – A serious matter for ecology. PLoS Biology 2 (11).
Klok, C. J., Sinclair, B. J. & Chown, S.L. (2004) Upper thermal tolerance and oxygen-limitation in terrestrial arthropods. Journal of Experimental Biology 207: 2361-2370.
Complete Publication List
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