Topic: Australian bearded dragon

Behaviors and cognitive processes, and their underlying brain circuits, must evolve to perform reliably if their operation is affected by fluctuating environmental conditions. How evolutionary change can act in vertebrate brains to compensate for environmental perturbations and to maintain optimal function remains poorly understood. I will present ongoing work to understand how the poikilothermic brain of the Australian bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) can function across a range of temperatures, when its cell types and molecular devices likely all have different temperature reaction rates. T