Stephen D. McCormick

Adjunct Professor

Photograph of Stephen McCormick
Education: 

B.S., Bates College, 1977

Ph.D., MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1983
Joint Program in Oceanography

Postdoctoral: 

St. Andrews Biological Station, New Brunswick, Canada, 1983-1986

University of California, Berkeley 1986-1990

Research Interests: 

Environmental and endocrine control of osmoregulation, growth, migration, development and reproduction in teleosts, primarily anadromous fishes.

Understanding how environmental factors affect animal performance (survival, growth and reproductive success) is important to our understanding of the natural world and how human activity affects it. My laboratory is interested in the environmental and endocrine control of osmoregulation, growth, migration, development and reproduction in teleosts, primarily anadromous fishes. Our current research focuses on physiological and environmental factors that affect conservation, restoration and enhancement of Atlantic salmon, American shad, blueback herring, alewife and Atlantic sturgeon. This includes laboratory and field work on underlying physiological principles and capacities, and applied work on contaminants, hatcheries, dams and with wild populations. Some of our current projects include the following:

Gill transport proteins involved in ion regulation of anadromous fishes and their hormonal control.

Environmental factors that affect the parr-smolt transformation of Atlantic salmon, including: endocrine disrupters, acidification and climate change.

Mechanisms of photoperiod control of smolt development and reproduction.

Thermal tolerance and temperature effects on growth and stress in salmonids.

Impacts of evolutionary loss of anadromy (‘landlocking’) on physiology of Atlantic salmon, alewives, shad and lamprey.

Representative Publications: 

Breves, J.P., Runiewicz, E.R., Richardson, S.G., Bradley, S.E., Hall, D.J., McCormick, S.D.  2024.  Transcriptional regulation of esophageal, intestinal, and branchial solute transporters by salinity, growth hormone, and cortisol in Atlantic salmon.  Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological and Integrative Physiology, 341: 107-117.  doi.org/10.1002/jez.2766 

Norstog, J.L. and McCormick, S.D.  2023.  Landlocked populations have small but detectable differences in ionoregulatory physiology compared to anadromous sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 80: 1579–1594 doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0242

von Biela, V.R., Regish, A.M., Kimball, L., Stanek, A.E. Waters, S., Carey, M.P., Zimmerman, C.E., Gerken, J., Rinella, D. and McCormick, S.D. 2023. Differential heat shock protein responses in two species of Pacific salmon and their utility in identifying heat stress. Conservation Physiology, 11(1): coad092. doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coad092

Ferreira-Martins, D., Walton, E., Karlstrom, R.O., Sheridan, M.A. and McCormick, S.D.  2023. The GH/IGF axis in the sea lamprey during metamorphosis and seawater acclimation.  Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology 571: 111937.  doi.org/10.1016/j.mce.2023.111937

Shaughnessy, C.A. and McCormick, S.D.  2023.  Juvenile sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) have a wide window of elevated salinity tolerance that is eventually limited during springtime warming. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 80: 105-114.  doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0097

Velotta, J.P., McCormick, S.D., Whitehead, A., Durso, C.S. and Schultz, E.T.  2022.  Repeated Genetic Targets of Natural Selection Underlying Adaptation of Fishes to Changing Salinity. Integrative and Comparative Biology 62: 357-375.  doi.org/10.1093/icb/icac072

Gong, N., Ferreira-Martins, D., Norstog, J.L., McCormick S.D. and Sheridan, M.A.  2022.  Discovery of prolactin-like in lamprey: role in osmoregulation and new insight into the evolution of the growth hormone/prolactin family.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(40): e2212196119.  doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2212196119.

Guo, L.W., McCormick, S.D., Schultz, E.T. and Jordaan, A.  2022.  Identification of supraoptimal temperatures in juvenile blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis) using survival, growth rate and scaled energy reserves.  Conservation Physiology 10(1): coac022. doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coac022  

McCormick, S.D., E.T. Schultz, and C.J. Brauner. 2022. Osmoregulation and acid-base balance. Pages 275-308 in S. Midway, C. Hasler, and P. Chakrabarty, editors. Methods for Fish Biology, 2nd edition. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland.  doi.org/10.47886/9781934874615.ch9

Regish, A.M., Ardren, W.R., Staats, N.R., Bouchard, H., Withers, J.L., Castro-Santos, T. and McCormick, S.D.  2021.  Surface water with more natural temperatures promotes physiological and endocrine changes in landlocked Atlantic salmon smolts.  Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 78: 775–786.  doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2020-0295

Barany-Ruiz, A., Shaughnessy, C.A., Pelis, R.F., Fuentes, J., Mancera, J.M. and McCormick, S.D.  2021.  Tissue- and salinity-specific Na–Cl cotransporter (NCC) orthologues involved in the adaptive osmoregulation of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus).  Scientific Reports 11:22698. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02125-1

Shaughnessy, C.A. and McCormick, S.D.  2021.  11-Deoxycortisol is a stress responsive and gluconeogenic hormone in a jawless vertebrate, the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). Journal of Experimental Biology 224: 241943.  doi.org/10.1242/jeb.241943

McCormick, S.D., Taylor, M.L. and Regish, A.M.  2020.  Cortisol is an osmoregulatory and glucose-regulating hormone in Atlantic sturgeon, a basal ray-finned fish.  Journal of Experimental Biology 223, jeb220251.  doi.org/10.1242/jeb.220251.

McCormick, S.D., Regish, A.M., Ardren, W.R., Björnsson, B.Th. and Bernier, N.J.  2019.  The evolutionary consequences for seawater performance and its hormonal control when anadromous Atlantic salmon become landlocked.  Scientific Reports (2019) 9:968.  doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-37608-1

McCormick, S.D. and Regish, A.M.  2018.  Effects of ocean acidification on salinity tolerance and seawater growth of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar smolts.  Journal of Fish Biology 93:560-566.  doi: 10.1111/jfb.13656