Newswise — San Diego (October 7, 2014)—Global climate change poses a threat to countless species on Earth and for some it is a life or death situation. “Human-driven climate change will put much of the Earth’s biodiversity at risk of extinction,” wrote Gretchen Hoffman, Morgan Kelly and Tyler Evans, chairs of the symposium “Responses to Global Change: Acclimatize, Adapt or Die.” The session will feature four presentations on how individual species are adapting to environmental changes. It will be presented on Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at the APS Intersociety meeting “Comparative Approaches to Grand Challenges in Physiology.”

“Species in a changing environment can escape extinction through shifts in geographic range, physiological plasticity or evolutionary adaptation,” the organizers wrote. “By studying capacities for plasticity and adaptation, comparative physiologists will help scientists, policymakers and the public to understand which species may be most at risk from climate change.”

The researchers presenting at the symposium will discuss the insights gained from diverse populations of smaller creatures, including ants, fruit flies, crustaceans and rockfish and look at how these findings can be applied to the larger framework of adaptation and evolution in the face of climate change.

Responses to Global Change: Acclimatize, Adapt Or DieTuesday, October 7—10:30 AM–12:30 PM P.T. Sponsored by the Society for Experimental Biology, Division of Comparative Physiology & Biochemistry

Chairs: Gretchen Hofmann, University of California, Santa Barbara; Morgan Kelly, Louisiana State University; Tyler G. Evans, California State University, East Bay

Speakers: Trait-based Approaches to Predicting the Response of Species to Global Change Speaker: Sarah Diamond, Case Western University

Ocean Acidification Effects on Temperate Rockfishes Speaker: Cheryl Logan, California State University, Monterey Bay

Mechanistic Overlap between Plastic and Evolved Responses to Heat StressSpeaker: Morgan Kelly, Louisiana State University

Synthesis Presentation: the Balance of Physiological Plasticity and AdaptationSpeaker: Ary Hoffmann, University of Melbourne, Australia

APS will jointly host “Comparative Approaches to Grand Challenges in Physiology” with the Society for Experimental Biology, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Australian and New Zealand Society for Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry, Canadian Society of Zoologists, Crustacean Society and International Society for Neuroethology. View the full program: http://ow.ly/Cgd3d.

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: To receive a full list of abstracts to be presented at the meeting or to arrange interviews with comparative researchers, please contact Stacy Brooks in the APS Office of Communications (301-634-7209; [email protected]).

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APS Intersociety meeting