S20 of ICCPB2011

Organizers:

Enrique Caviedes-Vidal (Univ. Nac San Luis, Argentina)
William H. Karasov (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

In recent years we have witnessed in biology a burgeoning increase in the documentation of patterns of physiological variation at large spatial and temporal scales. Analysis of the mechanisms underpinning these variations and their ecological significance has always been pivotal to support these documentations. Recently, molecular work continues a long tradition of reductionism in biological science that has greatly advanced our knowledge about the mechanisms underlying physiological variation at large scales. However, interpreting the functional significance of the vast amounts of the mechanistic processes, and their genomic expressions requires an integrative systems analysis and an evolutionary approach. Such an approach relies on understanding the organ and whole organismal function, as well as an analysis of the perspective that seeks the evolutionary origin of the variation and the conditions that are required to maintain it. Furthermore, organismal perspectives are necessary to link genomic information with ecological processes important to society such as responses of ecological systems to climate change, provisioning of ecosystem services, and conservation and management of biodiversity. Thus, we advocate that the classical reductionism continues to be of importance in this task, especially if the focus includes identifying and understanding in an integrated fashion the network of mechanisms that give rise to the biological process we see at the whole-organism, population, community, and ecosystem level.
This symposium brings together a number of biologists whose work, in total, spans the molecular to the ecosystem. They focus on a wide range of physiological features such as energy and water balance, digestive and kidney function. But all place their work within the integrative contexts that are the overarching theme of the symposium. Thus, this symposium is a special opportunity to highlight the integrative research perspective that has been overshadowed by the ascendency of molecular biology and the reductionist approach.

Speakers:

1) Enrique Caviedes-Vidal (Univ.Nac San Luis, Argentina)
Ontogeny: Digestive mechanisms and ecological consequences.

2) Denise Dearing (Univ. Utah, USA)
Transcending Plant-Herbivore Interactions in the Time of Omes.

3) Todd McWhorther (Univ. Adelaide, Australia)
Water balance in nectar-feeding birds: the intestine as an osmoregulatory organ.

4) William H. Karasov (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Intestinal absorption: a view from molecules to ecosystem.

5) Francisco Bozinovic (Pontificia Univ. Católica, Chile)
Environmental thermal mean and variance interact to determine physiological tolerance and fitness. Implications for climate change.