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Hello, my name is Karen Sweazea.
And I'm an Associate Professor
at Arizona State University.
I'm in the School of Nutrition
and Health Promotion,
as well as the School
of Life Sciences.
My main research focuses
are cardiovascular disease
as well as diabetes.
And I use a comparative
physiology approach
to study these conditions.
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So people often ask me,
what is comparative physiology?
Everyone knows that physiology
is the study of how
the body functions.
But people often assume
that comparative physiology
is simply the comparison
of lab animals to humans,
to which my response
is usually "well, not quite."
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Doctor August Krogh
was a physiologist
who lived from 1874-1949.
And he is often considered
the Grandfather of
Comparative Physiology.
He stated, "For many
problems there is an animal
on which it can be most
conveniently studied."
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So comparative physiology
is a special field
that considers both
the evolutionary
history of animals,
as well as their
ecological environments
when attempting to understand
how these animals
deal with challenges
to their physiology.
Some of the questions
that comparative physiologists
might ask include,
how do animals work?
Why did they evolve
specific traits or mechanisms?
And what are the driving
forces for adaptations?
And these driving forces
could include
changing environment,
such as climate change
that's so popular
in the news these days,
or changes in
food availability,
more or less food,
changes in season,
longer seasons,
shorter seasons,
more or less severe,
as well as changes
that occur in daily life.
All of which could
affect the fitness
and reproductive
success of an individual.
Often, there are more
simplistic models
of fundamental problems
that can be found in nature.
For example,
instead of studying
the human brain to
understand nerve function,
a researcher
might want to study,
perhaps, a giant squid,
that has a more
simple nervous system.
So by understanding
how simple and complex animals
deal with specific challenges,
we can begin to develop general
or unifying principles
that relate to all animals,
including humans.
