Mery Martinez Garcia

Biography

Mery Martinez Garcia is currently working as professor of Biology at Laurentian University.

Research Interest

My research interests focus fundamentally on animal physiology, and specifically on individual variation of physiological traits and adaptive mechanisms by which animals survive in changing environments. My students and I prefer to combine physiological, biochemical, behavioural and ecological data in order to examine how the energetic metabolism in animals is affected when abiotic or biotic factors in their environments change. Currently, my work is mostly with fish, but I am equally interested in vertebrates in general. My past interests include the physiology of locomotion in fish and their response to food availability. And most recently we focus on a widespread phenomena, hypoxia and its effects in fish fitness. We are studying the reproductif fitness of three different African fish, Barbus neumayeri, Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor visctorie and Barbus apleurogramma. My students and I are investigating to what extent hypoxia can affect the reproductive fitness (gonad size, sperm morphometry and sperm swimming capacity) across sites displaying divergent dissolved oxygen levels (hypoxia - normoxia).