Research in Zoology
Animal Physiology
The Animal Physiology Group’s greatest strength is in comparative animal physiology, offering a breadth of expertise graduate training for a wide range of techniques, and focusing on arthropods and vertebrates. Research is conducted at a number of different levels of biological organisation, from biochemical and tissue to organismal and ecological, includes a mixture of laboratory and field-based studies. We aim to understand the structural and functional capacities of organisms, their abilities to respond to environmental extremes, and how physiological adaptations to locomotion, activity metabolism and ion transport have arisen through evolutionary time. Charlie Ellington studies the aerodynamics, mechanics and physiology of insect flight, within the broader fi eld of biomechanics. Simon Maddrell studies epithelial transport of insect Malpighian tubules and its control by peptides and other blood-borne agents. Walter Federle investigates the physical ecology of insect-plant interactions and the mechanisms of surface adhesion in animals.