Meeting: Multifunctional structures and multistructural functions: Functional coupling and integration in the evolution of biomechanical systems, January 3-7, 2019 in Tampa Florida

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support participants in a symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in January 2019. This symposium will bring together a diverse group of biologists that study the evolution of morphology and its function. In particular, the speakers will discuss the study of behaviors that require coordination of many structures (e.g., feeding and locomotion) and organisms that use the same structures across multiple behaviors. This multi-component coordination (referred to as integration) is common in organisms but, due to limitations in data acquisition and analytical tools, is typically not addressed. This symposium will foster improved understanding of how integration influences the ecology and evolution of organisms by promoting discussion among speakers who are at the forefront of addressing hypotheses of integration, leveraging new tools in evolutionary statistics and biomechanical analysis. The speakers are diverse in terms of research topic, career stage, gender, ethnicity, and type of institution. Each speaker will publish an article in Integrative and Comparative Biology to provide a resource for future researchers interested in these ideas. This issue will also highlight complimentary presentations submitted by students and early career researchers. Open dialogue among participants, including a panel discussion, has been built into the program, and student social media representatives will convey ideas and questions to those who are unable to attend the symposium, including the public. As increasing use of genomic tools informs scientists about genetic control of phenotype, understanding of patterns and processes driving evolution of complex phenotypes, such as those inherent in many biomechanical systems, lags behind. Functional morphologists and organismal biologists strive to understand how organisms persist and flourish in a given environment. However, the parts of an organism often interact in complex ways to affect function, survival, and evolution. For example, some structural elements can be redundant relative to function, organisms may use such elements differently across contexts, or organisms may use the same anatomical element to perform multiple functions. These interactions are typically considered constraints on the ability to adapt and evolve, but they may also facilitate evolution if they allow multiple parts to change simultaneously in a way that favors survival. These emergent properties of form-function relationships should be of considerable interest to comparative biologists, but the field has been constrained by the broad scope of these questions that require potentially complex methodologies. This symposium aims to reconcile and unify this integrative organismal perspective, provide inspiration for new methodological approaches, and generate new hypotheses that can stimulate future studies of structural and functional complexity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.