INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

 John P. Harmon 



On behalf of the Commander and Staff of the Arctic Aeromedical 

 Laboratory, it is indeed a pleasure to welcome such distinguished 

 guests to this second Symposium on Arctic Biology and Medicine. We 

 hope that your trip was an enjoyable one, despite the long distances 

 many of you were forced to travel. It is our desire that you remem- 

 ber this visit to our Laboratory and to the State of Alaska as a 

 pleasant one as well as a scientifically profitable experience, and 

 if there is anything that I or the other Staff members might do to 

 assure this end, please do not hesitate to call on us. Before we 

 begin the formal portions of our program, I would like to say a few 

 words regarding our reasons for selecting the Comparative Phys- 

 iology of Vertebrate Temperature Regulation as a symposium topic. 



As you are all well aware, the ability to adapt to an adverse or 

 unusual environment is one of the more fundamental characteristics 

 of all living things. In fact, we might go so far as to say that the 

 ability to adapt to such environments is an essential prerequisite 

 to the successful perpetuationof any population of plants or animals. 

 Thus, when a species is unable to adapt to an adverse environment 

 it becomes extinct. 



To those ofus wholivein arctic or subarctic areas, the adapta- 

 tions of plants and animals to adverse environmental temperatures 

 are of singular importance. The accumulation of knowledge about 

 such adaptations therefore, is one of the primary reasons for invit- 

 ing you to participate in this Symposium. 



Since temperature adaptation is a very broad subject, it was 

 obviously impractical to attempt to organize a symposium that would 

 adequately cover the whole field. Consequently, we decided to con- 

 tinue the pattern that was followed in our first Symposium on Arctic 

 Biology and Medicine; namely, to give intensive consideration to 

 one rather narrowaspectof this field. Furthermore, we also decided 



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