Welcome to the Woods Lab

From left to right: Brian Foster, Jon Sprague, Tia Hunter, Kristen Potter, Art Woods, at the Southwest Research Station in mid-August 2009.

I work on interactions between physiology and animal ecology and evolution. Processes of special interest include (i) temperature effects on metabolic systems and (ii) the transport of oxygen and water between animals and their environments. Collectively we know lots of textbook-style details about animal physiology, but many open, and spectacularly interesting, questions remain about how physiological systems evolve, how physiology works across different environmental scales, and how physiological plasticity is shaped by evolution. My lab takes a broad, integrative approach to answering such questions.

June 2009. NSF awarded me a 5-year CAREER grant to study Manduca-Datura interactions from a biophysical perspective! The grant will support a set of studies on leaf microclimates, in both the lab and the field (in SE Arizona), focusing on how microclimate temperature and humidity affect egg and larval performance. Here's the lay abstract and the heavier-duty summary from the proposal. Our first AZ field trip is coming up--we leave July 24 and return middle of August.

May 2009. My sons and I spent a lovely 3 weeks camped out at Lower Lee Vining Campground a few thousand feet below Creagh's field site at Tioga Meadow. A pic or two.

April 2009. Two University of Montana undergraduates--Tia Hunter and Brian Foster--get MILES and EPSCoR funding to support their summer projects on my lab! Both will be going to AZ on the July/August field trip. They're studying physiological aspects of how Manduca embryos transition from the egg stage to feeding independently on host plant leaves.