Integrative Biology Seminar - Kathleen Hunt, Associate Professor

Whales in Wartime: Retrospective assessment of stress physiology of large whales during 9/11 and World War II

How are wildlife affected by chronic disturbances that never cease? From constant vessel traffic to widespread pollutants to relentless climate change, the natural environment today is full of anthropogenic disturbances that have become increasingly pervasive and continuous. The impacts of these "sub-lethal" disturbances on wildlife can be difficult to evaluate when there are no remaining un-exposed control groups to compare to. Rarely, however, humans suddenly change what they're doing, and the responses from wildlife can provide unique insight into the impacts of pervasive, sub-lethal stressors on wild vertebrates. Dr. Kathleen Hunt, Associate Professor at OSU's Marine Mammal Institute, is an endocrinologist and ecophysiologist who studies how wild vertebrates react and adapt to changes in their environment, often involving measuring stress hormones and reproductive hormones in the non-plasma sample types. In this talk, Dr. Hunt will review her highly cited study on fecal hormones of the North Atlantic right whale in September of 2001, comparing it to new data from Antarctic blue and fin whales during World War II. These two unique datasets are from times of great tragedy, yet also shed some much-needed light on the physiology and resilience of long-lived wildlife in an era of overwhelming human impacts.

This event is free and open to the public.