Teaching
My principal goals are to teach students to think about the ways that biological systems both function and interact with each other and their environment. This approach is consistent with my main areas of research -- physiology looks at interacting systems within the organism or at how these represent adaptation to particular environments and behavior can be studied mechanistically (how is it produced) and/or in terms of how it adapts an animal to its environment.
My approach to teaching is to minimize note taking by providing students with a nearly complete set of course notes. This allows us to devote more class time to discussion. The methods I use require students to be active learners who remain current with the course materials.
Course materials that I have developed can be found using the links below; they are free for anyone's use of modification provided they are not sold.
Course Websites and Other Web-Based Teaching Materials:
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Animal Physiology (Biology 390) Hypertext Syllabus and Materials -- all course materials (notes, problems, solutions (as assigned) and readings questions) can be found here as pdf.
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Ethology and Behavioral Ecology (Biology 287) -- syllabus, assignments, lecture related handouts and lab materials
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Teaching Game Theory to Students of Animal Behavior -- This website was developed in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Mitchell at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The site features a hypertext overview of simple game theory as applied to the evolution of behavior and it offers three interactive Java simulations of basic games: Hawks and Doves, Hawks, Doves, and Bourgeois, and War of Attrition. There is also a .pdf version of the site available for download.
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Introductory Biology (Biology 131) syllabus, assignments and lecture-related handouts. These materials were developed jointly with Dr. William Healy, Professor Emeritus.
- Principles of Biology -- Conservation Biology (Biology 114) -- presently being taught for the first time, some course materials are generally available.
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Exercise Physiology (Biology 114) (next offering is not certain) course materials (notes, problems, solutions and readings questions (pdf).
Research
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| Photo: mating in A. arboreus -- the male continues to sing as he passes a spermatophore to the female. |
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My research takes two directions. The first involves the studies of the importance of energy in acoustic communication in animals. In particular, I am interested in the what are often termed "mating calls". These calls, which are generally produced only by males, are often very loud and are produced at a high rate over a long period of time. I have been able to show that such calls are very expensive energetically. In ectothermic ("cold-blooded") animals such as many insects and frogs, the expense of producing these calls rivals or exceeds that of terrestrial locomotion. Besides looking at the metabolic energy required to produce such calls, I have also looked at the acoustic energy in the call and have been able to determine that animals do not change their metabolic energy into sound very efficiently. For instance, efficiency of locomotion such as walking, running, swimming or flying is typically 10 to 20% while the efficiency of sound production is generally less than 1%.
This discovery has led me and my students to investigate anatomical factors which actually determine the efficiency of sound production -- for instance features of the forewings of crickets
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My other area of interest is in understanding the limitations of the locomotory system of spiders. Spiders are superbly adapted predators. Their hunting styles vary from ambush, to cornering prey in burrows, to active pursuit and, of course, to the use of a bewildering variety of webs. Each species has its own particular morphological, physiological and behavioral traits that correlate the type of prey capture it uses. In my lab we look at the energetic consequences of these different approaches to prey capture. For instance, we have studied the amount of energy required to build different types of webs. We have tried to estimate the amount of energy required to capture different types of prey using different methods.
We are especially interested in understanding the limits (constraints) imposed on a spider's ability to move about rapidly. We compare species in terms of the their oxygen consumption, heart rates, and anaerobic and phosphagen metabolism during different types of exercise and recovery from that exercise. The ultimate goal of these studies are to (i) better understand some of the adaptations that spiders possess and relate these to similar predators in an attempt to understand the selective factors associated with various predatory patterns, and, (ii) come to a better understanding of the evolution of locomotory systems.
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Photo:This is one of my spider subjects -- a wolf spider, Hogna lenta. Its body is about 2 cm long. |
Recent Research Students
Emily Meyer ('07-'08) Emily is studying the morphology of the stridulatory apparatus of nemobine crickets and she will eventually attempt to relate variation in these structures to energy related features of the calling song in these and other species. |
| David Vafek ('06-'07) David is working on variation in cricket calling as a function of aging and tegminal damage. He will attend veterinary school in the fall at the University of Pennsylvania. |
Yin (Rex) Hung ('03-'04)
Energy and frequency bands in cricket and katydid songs, phase relationships and stridulation. Rex is currently attending Harvard Medical School and is also active in physics research. Rex is of my co-authors -- or more correctly, I am Rex's co-author!
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Jill Conroy ('02-'03)
Scanning electron microscopy of short-tailed cricket tegmina. Jill is teaching. |
Kristin O'Sullivan ('02)
Scanning electron microscopy of mole cricket tegmina. Kristin is presently attending Dartmouth medical school. Kristin is one of my co-authors. |
Melissa Pierre ('02)
Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production during recovery from exercise in spiders. Melissa is presently working at Harvard Medical School doing research in vascular biology. She is presently also applying to medical school. |
Marianne Seney ('00-'01)
Phase relationships between fundamental and harmonic "ticking" frequencies in cricket calls. Marianne is in graduate school in neuroscience at UMass Amherst. |
Sarah Gibbs ('00-'01)
Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production during recovery from exercise in spiders. Sarah is in graduate school in biological sciences at Mississippi State. |
Melissa Cunningham ('00-'01)
Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production during recovery from exercise in spiders |
The Bear's Recent and/or Best
Most Available as E-prints (pdf)
Prestwich, K. N. 2007. Measuring the efficiency of sound production. Physiol Biochem Zool. 80, 157-165.
Prestwich, K. N. 2006. Anaerobic Metabolism and Maximal Running in the Scorpion Centruroides hentzi (Banks) (Scorpiones, Buthidae). J. Arachnology 34,351-356.
Prestwich, K. N. and O'Sullivan, K. 2005. Simultaneous measurement of metabolic and acoustic power and the efficiency of sound production in two mole cricket species (Orthoptera: Gryllotalpidae). J. Exp. Biol. 208, 1495-1512.
Hung, Y. P. and K. N. Prestwich. 2005. Is significant acoustic energy found in audible and ultrasound harmonics of the carrier frequency in ensiferan calling songs? J. Orthoptera Res. 13, 63-71.
Prestwich, K. N., Lenihan, K. M. , and Martin, D. M. 2000. The control of carrier frequency in cricket calls: a refutation of the subalar-tegminal resonance/auditory feedback model. J. Exp. Biol. 203, 585-596.
Prestwich, K.N. 1994. Energy and constraints on acoustic communication in insects and anurans. American Zoologist 34(6): 625-643.
Prestwich, K.N., K. E. Brugger, and M. Topping. 1989. Energy and communication in three species of hylid frogs: power input, power output and efficiency. J. Exp. Biol. 144: 53-80.
Prestwich, K.N. 1988a. The constraints on maximal activity in spiders, I. Evidence against the hydraulic insufficiency hypothesis. J. Comp. Physiol. B. 158: 437-447.
Prestwich, K.N. 1988b. The constraints on maximal activity in spiders, II. Limitations imposed by phosphagen depletion and anaerobic metabolism. J. Comp. Physiol. B. 158: 449-456.
Anderson, J.F., and K. N. Prestwich. 1985. The physiology of exercise at and above maximal aerobic capacity in a theraphosid (tarantula) spider Brachypelma smithii. J. Comp. Physiol. 155: 529-539.
Prestwich, K. N. 1983a. Anaerobic metabolism in spiders. Physiol. Zool. 56:112-121
Prestwich, K. N. 1983b. The roles of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism in active spiders. Physiol. Zool. 56:122-132
Anderson, J.F. and K.N. Prestwich. Respiratory gas exchange in spiders. Physiol. Zool. 55:72-90.
Prestwich, K. N. and T. J. Walker. 1981. Energetics of singing in crickets: Effects of temperature in three trilling species (Orthoptera: Gryllidae). J. Comp. Physiol. 143:199-212
Anderson, J. F. and K. N. Prestwich. 1980. Scaling of subunit structures in book lungs of spiders (Araneae). J. Morph. 165: 167-174.
Prestwich, K. N. 1977. The energetics of web-building in spiders. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 57A:321-326.
Anderson, J. F. and K. N. Prestwich. 1975. The fluid pressure pumps of spiders (Chelicerata, Araneae). Z. Morph. Tiere 81:257-277.
Some of My Favorite Websites:
Sea Turtle Conservation:
Professional Societies ( I am pleased to belong to these organizations):
My home away from home:
Science and Natural History:
Habitat Restoration: The University of Florida's Natural Area Teaching Laboratory (NATL). See where I spend some of my spare time "doing forestry" while Gainesville in the early summer for mostly research purposes. This is an area of the UF campus that is being restored as a long-leaf pine community.
Electronic Scientific Publication: Electronic publication of scientific journals is arriving, although considerably more slowly should be the case. Library journal subscription costs are ballooning, time to publication is far too long, and many professional societies seem to have forgotten their primary raison d'etre . A revolution in scientific publication may be on its way -- visit these sites:
- The Electronic Future of Scientific Journals (by T.J. Walker) -- a thorough, up-to-date set of resources dealing with scientific publication, including its history, economics, and the roles of scholarly societies and academic publishers. Especially noteworthy for its discussions of ways to pay for electronic publishing and formats of electronic publishing. Written by a pioneer in the field. Well-referenced and many references are hyperlinks.
- Florida Entomologist (On-Line): an excellent example of a fully on-line journal (also available in print).
- An Example of an On-Line Textbook: Integrated Pest Management textbook that is entirely on line, including an explanation of the project.
Everyone's Favorite -- The Coriolis Effect -- Do whirlpools in sinks and rising smoke really turn different ways in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres? Don't count on it. Click here to debunk all those poorly researched textbooks.
U.S. History
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Photo: KP attempts to get around some of the problems of scale -- unfortunately this is a grasshopper, not a big cricket.
(Boston Museum of Science display). |
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