COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY
Honors Specialization
- Honors Specialization in Comparative Physiology Requirements - This pdf form is a guide only, for complete information see the Academic Calendar.
If you wanted to climb Mount Everest, you would
need to train very hard and take several bottles of
oxygen in order to cope with the extreme altitude.
Even with this help, you could only move at a
snail’s
pace. When you reached the top, however,
you might look up to see a bar-headed goose
happily flying at 30 km/h several hundred meters
above the peak!
In humans the accumulation of small amounts (about 0.0001% of
body weight) of heavy metals such as lead can cause serious
diseases, including dementia. On the other hand, some plants
such as this Thlaspi caerulescens remain healthy with as much as 5,000 times more metal. These plants can be used to help clean up heavy metals from contaminated soils.
How can birds fly higher than Everest, and plants thrive in “toxic” soil? You can learn this and more in the Comparative Physiology specialized honors degree module from the UWO Department of Biology. It stresses the integrative nature of physiological and biochemical systems – from the genome to the whole organism. The evolution of these systems is examined by comparing their function over evolutionary time. The program also emphasizes the significance of the environment to changes in these systems over acute, acclimatory and evolutionary time scales.
Consultation with the chair of the Honors Specialization in Comparative Physiology, Dr. Brent Sinclair, is advised prior to registration in your third year.
