Environmental and evolutionary physiology of marine organisms, functional genomics of porcelain crabs, thermal physiology, responses to climate change. We study environmental physiology of organisms to achieve two basic goals: (1) to explore the physiological linkages between environmental change (such as climate change) and ecosystem responses (such as shifting populations or alteration in species interactions), and (2) to learn more about the basic physiological mechanisms that organisms use in responding to their environments. The main organisms that we study are coastal marine invertebrates including porcelain crabs in the genus Petrolisthes, but also other organisms such as corals and coccolithophores. The main research tools that we apply are in vivo physiological measurements, such as cardiac activity and metabolic rate, and molecular measurements at biochemical (e.g., enzymatic properties) and molecular levels (e.g., transcriptome profiling using cDNA microarrays). For our microarray studies, we generated a large set of EST sequences for Petrolisthes resulting in the most comprehensive functional genomics resource for any crab and the third largest for any crustacean. Projects currently underway in our laboratory involve an examination of correlated changes in thermal phenotype and gene expression during thermal acclimation, acclimatization, and stress responses in porcelain crabs, functional genomics of porcelain crabs including construction of our microarray and sequence database PCAD, thermal biology of corals that survive extreme conditions in a Samoan lagoon, metabolic responses to environmental salinity change in an invasive clam in San Francisco Bay, and physiological and genomic responses of unicellular calcifying algae called coccolithophores to ocean acidification predicted by year 2100.

Mykles, D.L., K.G. Burnett, D.S. Durica and J.H. Stillman. 2016. Tapping the power of crustacean transcriptomics to address grand challenges in comparative biology: An introduction to the symposium. Int. Comp. Biol. Doi: 10.1093/icb/icw116 Armstrong, E.J. and J.H. Stillman. 2016.Construction and Characterization of Two Novel Transcriptome Assemblies in the Congeneric Porcelain Crabs Petrolisthes cinctipes and P. manimaculis. Integrative and Comparative Biology. doi: 10.1093/icb/icw043 Williams CM, LB Buckley, KS Sheldon, M Vickers, H-O Portner, W.W. Dowd, AR Gunderson, KE Marshall, JH Stillman. 2016. Biological impacts of thermal extremes: mechanisms and costs of functional responses matter. Int. Comp. Biol. doi:10.1093/icb/icw013 Gunderson, A.R., E.J. Armstrong, and J.H. Stillman. 2016. Multiple Stressors in a Changing World: The Need for an Improved Perspective on Physiological Responses to the Dynamic Marine Environment Annual Review of Marine Science. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-marine-122414-033953 Gunderson, A.R. and J.H. Stillman. 2015. Plasticity in thermal tolerance has limited potential to buffer ectotherms from global warming. Proc. Roy. Soc. B. Proc. R. Soc. B 282: 20150401. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0401 Bjelde, B.E., N.A. Miller, J.H. Stillman and A.E. Todgham. 2015. The role of oxygen in determining upper thermal limits in Lottia digitalis under air exposure and submersion. Physiol. Biochem. Zool. 88(5):483–493. Martz, T.R., K. Daly, R.H. Byrne, J. Stillman, and D. Turk. 2015. Technology for ocean acidification research: Needs and availability. Oceanography 28(2): 40–47. Diner, R.E., I. Benner I, U. Passow, T. Komada, E.J Carpenter, J.H. Stillman. 2015. Negative effects of ocean acidification on calcification vary within the coccolithophore genus Calcidiscus. Mar Biol. DOI: 10.1007/s00227-015-2669-x Garland, MA, J.H. Stillman, L. Tomanek. 2015. The proteomic response of cheliped myofibril tissue in the eurythermal porcelain crab Petrolisthes cinctipes to heat shock following acclimation to daily temperature fluctuations. J. Exp. Biol. 218, 388-403 doi:10.1242/jeb.112250 Stillman, JH and DA Hurt. 2015. Chapter 13: Crustacean Genomics and Functional Genomic Responses to Environmental Stress and Infection. in Natural History of the Crustacea, Vol. 4. ES Chang and M Thiel Eds. Oxford Univ. Press Stillman JH and EA Armstrong. 2015. Genomics are transforming our understanding of responses to climate change. Bioscience 10.1093/biosci/biu219.