Gretchen Hofmann is professor of ecological physiology of marine organisms at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. She holds a B.S. from the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

in Environmental, Population and Organismal Biology. She works on the ecological physiology of marine organisms, in particular

kelp Kelps are large brown algae seaweeds that make up the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera. Despite its appearance, kelp is not a plant - it is a heterokont, a completely unrelated group of organisms. Kelp grows in "underwa ...

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s and perciform fishes. Hofman's work on the effects of changing seawater acidity and temperature on marine life has drawn wide attention. Hofmann told The Times of India that as marine invertebrates deal with increasing acidity, the larvae have to "re-tune" their metabolism in order to still make a shell. "But this is done at a cost. The physiological changes that are a response to the acidity make the animals less able to withstand warmer waters, and they are smaller," which causes "catastrophic" problems on up the food chain as larger organisms fail to get enough food In 2006, Reuters followed her to Antarctica where she drilled through the ice to explore the impact of warming global temperatures on fish. She explained that "“If we learn how the most cold-adapted organisms -- the organisms that are most used to cold and no temperature change -- how they respond, we might learn something about the processes in temperate species, figuring out what pathways to look at that might be changing -- or might not be changing.”

Publications

Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium (2006) The Genome of the Purple Sea Urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Science 314: 941-952. Lund, S.G and G.E. Hofmann (2006) Turning up the heat: the effects of thermal acclimation on the kinetics of HSF1 DNA-binding activity and Hsp70 gene expression in the eurythermal goby, Gillichthys mirabilis. Comparative Physiology A 143: 435-446. Osovitz, C.J. and G.E. Hofmann (2005) Thermal-history dependent expression of the hsp70 gene in the purple sea urchins: Biogeographic patterns and the effect of thermal acclimation. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 327: 134-143. Hofmann, G.E., J.L. Burnaford and K.T. Fielman (2005) Genomics-fueled approaches to current challenges in marine ecology. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20(6): 305-311

References

University of Colorado alumni University of Wyoming alumni Living people University of California, Santa Barbara faculty American marine biologists Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-academic-scientist-stub