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