The 2nd joint congress on Evolutionary Biology will take place in Montpellier (France) in August 2018.

From more than 200 proposals our contribution is one of the 78 selected symposia! Abstracts are welcome for the symposium S25 - Macroevolutionary dynamics of form-function relationships organized by Böhmer (FUNEVOL), Houssaye (FUNEVOL) & colleagues.

It’s our great pleasure to announce our invited speaker: Stephanie Pierce from Harvard University!

End of call for contributed talks/posters: January 15, 2018.

Summary:

Macroevolutionary studies applied to comparative and paleontological datasets have revealed much about the dynamics of adaptation across deep time. While such studies commonly examine the evolution of morphology, an important intermediary connecting adaptive landscapes to phenotypic traits is organismal performance. Performance generally more closely relates to organismal fitness and may exhibit very different dynamics than the morphological traits underlying them. Thus, understanding the biomechanics and performance of biological systems can provide key insights into the connections between macroevolutionary models and adaptive landscapes and give greater insights into the functional and ecological implications of major evolutionary transitions. Recent advances in the collection and availability of performance data from comparative and paleontological datasets combined with novel macroevolutionary and biomechanical models are allowing researchers to identify predictable patterns of evolution in response to phylogenetically replicated ecological shifts. By focusing on the relationships between form, function, fossils and phylogeny, this symposium will bring together experts in functional morphology and biomechanical modeling with developers and practitioners of phylogenetic comparative methods--with the goal of cultivating a deeper relationship between macroevolutionary models and biomechanical data and theory.

Invitation_Symposium.pdf