Breaking Boundaries for Evolutionary Synthesis: An Interactive and Integrative Symposium Linking Crustacean and Insect Physiology- West Palm Beach, Florida; January, 2015

Society For Integrative And Comparative Biology, Herndon VA

Investigators

Abstract

Insects and crustaceans represent critical, dominant animal groups (by biomass and species number) in terrestrial and aquatic systems, respectively. Insects and crustaceans were historically grouped under separate taxonomic classes under the Phylum Arthropoda, and for many years it was thought that myriapods might be the closest relatives to insects. New genetic data have made it clear that insects and other hexapods are nested within the crustaceans within the arthropod tree as a clade termed the Pancrustacea. This new evolutionary understanding provides the intellectual motivation to initiate a new focus in evolutionary physiology aimed at understanding commonalities and evolutionary trends in the Pancrustacea. This award will support a new type of symposium designed to promote synthetic collaborations across taxa and disciplines at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting at West Palm Beach, Florida, January 2015. In this symposium, researchers who work primarily on insects or crustaceans will work together on both their talks and manuscripts. In addition, each researcher will address a common set of focal, integrative questions in their talks and manuscripts. Audience participation will be a focus of the symposium and a post-seminar workshop. Some participants, including the trainees, may even contribute to the manuscripts as a result of their participation. This explicitly integrative approach to a symposium is novel at SICB and will hopefully galvanize further innovations that promote interdisciplinary synthesis. In addition, this award will support mentoring and scientific development of a large number of diverse junior investigators and trainees.