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Joseph Brandt Presidential Associate Professor of Zoology
Dean, University College
Phone: (405)325-2072
Fax: (405)325-6202RM/Lab:RH100
Dr. Gaffin's Web Page
Current Research Interests and Subject Areas Available for Graduate Research
Our laboratory is interested in how animals acquire and process information about their sensory environments. We have focused on sand scorpions in our research, owing to their clean native habitat, slow walking behavior, and fluorescent cuticle. The chemo-, mechano-, and visual sensory systems of these animals are all approachable to physiological investigation and we use a combination of behavioral, morphological, and electrophysiological techniques to deduce circuitry and neural coding of sensory information in this ancient group of animals.
Much of our work focuses on the large, midventral appendages of scorpions called pectines. These chemosensory organs are dragged or swept intermittently across the ground as the animal walks and are important in mediating chemically induced mate-finding and food-locating behaviors. A novel feature of the pectinal chemosensory system is the existence of synapses between primary and neural afferents. Extracellular recordings from peg sensilla, the primary sensory structures on pectines, contain large-amplitude sensory cell firings that are distinguishable by waveform. By cross-correlating the activity of these sensory units during bouts of chemical stimulation, we are learning how information is coded in this accessible neural network.
To learn more about this research, visit Dr. Gaffin's Web Page.
B.S., University of California, Berkeley
Member, Oklahoma Center for Neuroscience
2007 OU Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award
2004 OU Regents' Award for Superior Teaching
1999 Outstanding First-Year-Advocate Award (from National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina)
1999 General Education Teaching Award
1997 Irene Rothbaum Award
Selected publications:
Blass GRC, Gaffin DD (2008) Light wavelength biases of scorpions. Animal Behaviour 76:365-373
Walvoord ME, Hoefnagels MH, Gaffin DD, Long D, Chumchal M (2007) An assessment of Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) in a biology classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching 37(4):66-73.
Lewis R, Parker B, Gaffin D, Hoefnagels M (2007) Life, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill Corporation. (General biology textbook).
Gaffin DD, Walvoord ME (2004) Scorpion peg sensilla: are they the same or are they different? Euscorpius 17:7-15.
Steinmetz SB, Bost KC, Gaffin DD (2004) Response of male Centruroides vittatus (Scorpiones: Buthidae) to aerial and substrate-borne chemical signals. Euscorpius 12:1-6.
Gaffin DD (2002) Electrophysiological analysis of synaptic interactions within peg sensilla of scorpion pectines. Microscopy Research and Technique 58:325-334.
Gaffin DD, Brownell PH (2001) Chemosensory behavior and physiology. In: Brownell PH, Polis GA, editors. Scorpion Biology and Research. Oxford University Press. pp 184-203.
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