Meeting Abstract
Organisms live in thermally dynamic environments and have evolved mechanisms to survive acute thermal stress. These include behavioral responses such as movements toward preferred temperatures and postural modification and molecular mechanisms such as biochemical adaptation and expression of heat shock proteins which act as chaperones to protect the three dimensional structure and function of critical cellular machinery. These responses have consequences for organismal fitness and evolutionary adaptation, but what are the costs of the stress response? We hypothesized that the energetic costs of resilience to acute thermal stress are detectable as elevations above resting metabolic rate and are likely to persist long after the initial exposure and during recovery. Before and following exposure to short, acute, hot or cold temperature shocks, we measured the metabolic rates of adult male and female Drosophila melanogaster in a controlled and repeated measures experimental design. This research was conducted as part of a collaborative project (www.thermofly.org) and was supported by funding from NSF EPSCOR RII Track 2 FEC (1826689): From Genome to Phenome in a Stressful World: Epigenetic regulatory mechanisms mediating thermal plasticity in Drosophila.
