Rate My Professor Frank Seebacher

Professor Frank Seebacher serves as Professor of Biology in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. He leads the Evolutionary and Ecological Physiology Lab, which investigates animal responses to changing environments and the evolutionary trajectories of these responses across space and time. The lab's research centers on the interaction between environmental change and phenotypic plasticity versus adaptation, bridging underlying physiological and molecular mechanisms to their ecological and behavioural manifestations. Key areas include assessing thermal variability to determine animal resilience to heat waves via measurement of mechanisms and mathematical modeling; exploring plasticity induced by epigenetic mechanisms during development and its modulation of within-individual reversible plasticity such as acclimation; and examining how physiological capacities constrain behaviour, explaining patterns in individual actions and inter-individual interactions. Seebacher's fields of research encompass behavioural ecology, ecological physiology, animal behaviour, animal developmental and reproductive biology, and animal cell and molecular biology. His work also addresses endocrine responses to environmental variation, metabolic regulation, transgenerational epigenetic plasticity, conservation physiology, and impacts of pollutants like bisphenols on animal biology.

Seebacher has authored 232 publications, garnering over 11,354 citations. His highly influential papers include "Physiological plasticity increases resilience of ectothermic animals to climate change" (Nature Climate Change, 2015; 1,320 citations), "Evolution of plasticity: mechanistic link between development and reversible acclimation" (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2016; 346 citations), "Coping with thermal challenges: physiological adaptations to environmental temperatures" (Comprehensive Physiology, 2012; 469 citations), "Physiological mechanisms of thermoregulation in reptiles: a review" (Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 2005; 333 citations), "Coadaptation: a unifying principle in evolutionary thermal biology" (Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, 2006; 370 citations), "The effects of obesity on skeletal muscle contractile function" (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2018; 290 citations), and "What do warming waters mean for fish physiology and fisheries?" (Journal of Fish Biology, 2020; 244 citations). These contributions have profoundly shaped understanding of thermal biology, phenotypic plasticity, and ectotherm responses to climate change. Seebacher received the Humboldt Research Award recognizing his excellence in animal biochemistry and physiology, ecology and biodiversity of animals, and organismic interactions.