Conservation physiology today and tomorrow.

S J Cooke

doi:10.1093/conphys/cot033

Abstract

Some eight years ago Martin Wikelski and I started musing about how physiological knowledge and tools could be used to understand conservation problems. We were certainly not the first to do so, but we were able to codify the idea by coin ing the term ‘conservation physiology’ (Wikelski and Cooke, 2006), which has been embraced by many. When the leadership at the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB), including Tony Farrell, Craig Franklin, and Paul Hutchinson, embarked on a plan to launch a new journal, the topic of conservation physiology quickly rose to the top, given its timeliness and potential to engage both plant and animal researchers. That was nearly two years ago. Today I am thrilled to launch the second volume of the journal Conservation Physiology, published jointly by Oxford University Press (OUP) and the SEB. Here I briefly reflect on the first year (2013) of contributions to Conservation Physiology and consider what can be expected in 2014 and beyond. The Conservation Physiology submission portal opened quietly in December of 2012 and, with negligible advertising, we started receiving submissions. The inaugural paper (Cooke et al., 2013) was published in March, with the official launch of the journal occurring with great fanfare at the SEB Annual Meeting in Valencia, Spain in July. As of December 2013, Volume 1 had over 30 papers published, with another handful of accepted articles in production. The content is remarkably diverse, spanning taxa including plants (Funk,

Highlights

The Conservation Physiology submission portal opened quietly in December of 2012 and, with negligible advertising, we started receiving submissions
The topics are diverse, but two topical areas certainly emerge, i.e. non-invasive methods of studying disturbance and/or reproductive state in wild animals, and the effects of environmental change on organismal physiology and survival. The former topic has included contributions that review the tools available for studying the physiology of free-living whales (Hunt et al, 2013) and amphibians (Narayan, 2013), as well as empirical studies that use ‘fake’ eggs with heart-rate sensors to assess human disturbance thresholds in penguins (Ellenberg et al, 2013) and faecal glucocorticoid sampling to assess logging and hunting disturbance in primates (Rimbach et al, 2013). The latter topic, environmental change, has included papers that examine how climate change modifies host–parasite interactions (Rohr et al, 2013) and considering how thermal conditions influence the respiratory physiology of migratory Pacific salmon (Eliason et al, 2013)
For those working in the area of conservation physiology, a number of challenges exist

Summary

Introduction

The Conservation Physiology submission portal opened quietly in December of 2012 and, with negligible advertising, we started receiving submissions. The topics are diverse, but two topical areas certainly emerge, i.e. non-invasive methods of studying disturbance and/or reproductive state in wild animals, and the effects of environmental change on organismal physiology and survival.

Results

Conclusion