This award supports purchase of a number of instruments and related items to be used for investigation of organismal physiology. The instruments will be managed as a shared facility that provides core infrastructure to support research, coursework and training of both undergraduate and graduate students. The facility will be used by a dozen faculty members within the Biology Department who are active in research that spans animal, plant, and microbial physiology. Among the instruments to be acquired are a gas-exchange system for measurement of photosynthesis, animal respirometry systems, an oxygen sensor system, pH meters, micromanipulators, and growth chambers. These state-of-the-art physiological instruments will be used by faculty, student researcher, and participants in biology courses. Faculty research projects that will benefit from instrumentation include examinations of animal metabolism in dimorphic spiders, bat physiology, physiology of plant stomata, and microbially-mediated decomposition in wetlands.
