energy metabolism

Exercise or swimming is an essential daily activity among aquatic organisms particularly on foods searching, seasonal migration, seasonal reproduction, predator-prey obviation and pollutants avoidance

This project tries to unravel some of the involved trade-offs, and will analyse the structural, functional and physiological trade-offs that exist in the buccal system of two closely related haplochro

Because of the variability of oxygen concentrations in aquatic and especially freshwater environments, oxygen has been a major force in the evolution of fishes.

In this project we’ll try to examine if endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are capable off disrupting pancreas, liver and adipocyt function, if they can cause changes in insulin, glucagon and leptin levels and if they can induce molecular mechanisms that could be associated with certain metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and/or cardiovascular diseases. A limited list of endocrine disrupting chemicals, known as pollutants, will be studied. This project attempts to show that these chemicals disturb energy reservoirs of cells, specifically by intervening with glucose and/or lipid metabolism. Special attention will be directed to the elucidation of the mechanisms of action that underlie these disruption.

Within this research topic we study the capacity of aquatic organisms to adjust to different environmental conditions (salinity, pH, hypoxia, T°), including pollution. Special attention is paid to the energetic cost of acclimatisation processes and its effect on the overall fitness of the organism involved. These studies can go in depth within one species, but an important part of the research is of comparative nature. We are also interested in the relative importance of physiological acclimatisation and genetic adaptation on the environmental fitness of aquatic organisms, and study effects of habitat fragmentation on population characteristics and physiological fitness of organisms.