Comparative Respiratory Physiology

and Biomechanics

Phil Matthews

Associate Professor

Phil Matthews completed his PhD at the University of Adelaide in South Australia (2008) before taking up an ARC funded APA and DECRA postdoctoral fellowship in Dr Craig White's lab at the University of Queensland where he studied breathing patterns in insects. He joined the ComPhy group in the Zoology Department at UBC in 2014.

His research focuses on the comparative respiratory physiology of insects. His goal is to understand the adaptations that allow insects to breathe in different environments, as well as how they sense and respond to changes in oxygen, carbon dioxide and pH level.

Courses taught:

Biol 453 - Insect Physiology

Biol 325 - Introduction to Animal Mechanics and Locomotion

Zool 503 - Comparative Animal Physiology Seminar Series

Biol 548Q - Advanced topics in Biology - Respirometry

Biol 140 - Laboratory Investigations in Life Science

Current Lab Members

Daniel Lee

Ph.D student

Daniel started in the lab on an Undergraduate Student Research Award in 2015, before expanding his summer research project on dragonfly hemolymph (blood) into an Honours thesis. He is now undertaking an PhD in the lab, studying the respiratory adaptations of developmentally amphibious insects, including dragonflies (Odonata, Anisoptera) and stoneflies (Plecoptera). Using a custom-built respirometer/spirometer he is measuring the tidal volume and extraction efficiency of the dragonfly nymph's tidally-ventilated rectal gill. This work is shedding light on the physiological challenges that have been overcome by those ancestrally terrestrial insects insects that now completely aquatic during part of their life cycle.

Funding:

NSERC CGS D (2020-23)

Evan McKenzie

Ph.D student

Evan started in the lab in 2017 as an MSc but has since transferred into the PhD program. He is currently investigating the unique buoyancy control mechanism used by aquatic Chaoborus midge larvae. Chaoborus larvae are the only animals, other than Teleost fishes, that regulate their buoyancy using flexible, gas-filled hydrostatic organs. His latest paper "A pH-powered mechanochemical engine regulates the buoyancy of Chaoborus midge larvae" has been published in Current Biology.

Funding:

British Columbia Graduate Scholarship (2020-21)

Zoology Graduate Fellowship (2022)

Tahnee Ames

M.Sc student (co-supervised with Ben Matthews)

Tahnee moved from SUNY-ESF, New York, to undertake her MSc looking at the transcriptome of the hydrostatic organs of Chaborous larvae. The four discreet air-sacs that comprise the hydrostatic organ are derived from the insect's tracheal system. Bands of resilin in the air-sac walls expand and contract in response to changes in pH brought about by enveloping epithelium. Her research will reveal the molecular mechanisms that this insect uses to control the pH, and therefore volume and buoyancy, of their air-sacs. It will also shed light on how this unique hydrostatic organ evolved and whether this insect's resilin is specifically adapted to function as a pH-driven actuator.

Lab Alumni

Elisabeth Bergman

M.Sc. student

Elisabeth joined the lab in September 2018 to study the mechanics and energetics of xylem feeding in froghoppers and leafhoppers. - xylem feeding insects that suck against enormous negative pressures using a muscular cibarial pump. Her first paper "The cibarial pump of the xylem-feeding froghopper Philaenus spumarius produces negative pressures exceeding 1 MPa" was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Tormod Rowe

M.Sc. student

Tormod started his MSc in the lab in January 2018. He is working on understanding how insects generate episodic ventilatory rhythms by implanting cockroaches with fiber-optic PO2 and PCO2 probes to monitor how these parameters are regulated during continuous and episodic breathing. His MSc work has been published in the Journal for Experimental Biology.

Ryan Sprenger

Ph.D. student (co-supervised with Bill Milsom)

Ryan completed his BSc. and MSc. at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. His undergraduate and graduate research, under the direction of Dr. Courtney Kurtz and Dr. Hannah Carey, focused on immune function and adipose accumulation in hibernating ground squirrels.

He is currently senior research physiologist at Fauna Bio

Dio Ozoh

Summer Scholar student

Dio undertook an NSERC USRA in the lab in 2023. He studied how dragonfly nymphs swim as their size changes across development. This involved filming and analyzing high-speed camera footage of jetting nymphs

Funding:

NSERC USRA (2023)

Anika Chen

Summer Scholar student

Anika undertook an SURE Award in the lab in 2023. She worked to understand how aquatic stick insects manage to breathe through their long respiratory siphon while submerged.

Funding:

SURE Award (2023)

Graeme Ernest-Hoar

Hons and Summer Scholar student

Graeme undertook an NSERC USRA in the summer of 2022 looking at how aquatic dragonfly nymphs hatching underwater fill their tracheal system with gas, as well a studying the tidal ventilation of Ranatra - an aquatic bug that breathes through a long respiratory siphon while submerged.

Funding:

NSERC USRA (2022)

Emma Green

Summer Scholar student

Emma undertook an NSERC USRA in the lab in 2019. She worked with Elisabeth Bergman on the morphology of cibarial pumps, generating 3D renderings of the pump's musculature and morphology from micro-CT scans.

Funding:

SURE Award (2020)

NSERC USRA (2019)

Kephra Beckett

Hons student

Kephra joined the lab in the summer of 2017 as an NSERC USRA scholar, investigating the respiratory physiology of spittlebugs. The paper that resulted from this work was covered by the New York Times and can be seen here. She recently completed her Honours degree in the lab, co-supervised with Michelle Tseng, examining the critical PO2 of damselfly nymphs, and how this alters their predatory interactions with their zooplankton food.

Funding:

NSERC USRA (2017 and 2018)

Auguste de Pennart

Summer Scholar student

Auguste started in the lab in 2018 on a SURE summer scholarship. He is studying how dragonfly nymphs become bimodal-breathers, accessing atmospheric oxygen using their rectal gill as pre-final instars, before developing functional thoracic spiracles for air-breathing as late final instars.

Funding:

SURE Award (2018)

Raman Ubhi

Directed studies student

Raman started in the lab in 2016 as an NSERC USRA scholar. He is currently working on understanding the relationship between cockroach activity and gas exchange patterns using respirometry and video activity/behavior analysis.

Funding:

NSERC USRA (2016)

Anna Robertson

M.Sc. student

After completing her Honours thesis at Mt Allison University, Anna joined the lab as an MSc student in 2015. She completed her thesis entitled "Fluorescent implantable elastomer tags for the measurement of oxygen in insects" in 2017. This work was directed towards developing implantable fluorescent oxygen sensors to non-invasively monitor O2 levels within animals. She is profiled on the UBC Graduate School website here.

Funding:

Zoology Graduate Fellowship

NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Masters