Symposium: "Selection and Evolution of Organismal Performance in Nature", to be held January 2003 in Toronto, Canada.

生物执行关键任务（奔跑、飞行、觅食、获取和处理养分、调节水和离子）的能力如何在自然环境中响应选择而进化，是理解适应和生物多样性的核心问题。在过去的二十年里，研究人员已经开发了一个理论和方法框架来解决这个问题，并将这个框架应用于不同的自然系统。我们为2003年1月在安大略省多伦多举行的综合与比较生物学学会年会组织了一个全社会范围的研讨会，题为“自然有机体性能的选择和进化”。研讨会汇集了主要的初级和高级研究人员，他们的研究整合了对自然界中有机体性能、表型选择和微进化的分析。总的来说，这些研究考虑了分类群、栖息地、性能组成部分的多样性，以及解决以下问题的经验和理论方法：自然种群中有机体性能的选择和微进化的机制和模式是什么？专题讨论会将确定不同系统和业绩特征之间选择和进化模式的共同点和差异；提供一个论坛，讨论研究自然表现的方法和概念挑战；并提出该领域的新方向。会议记录将发表在综合生物学领域的权威杂志《综合与比较生物学》上。

AbstractHow the ability of organisms to perform key tasks-to run, fly, forage, acquire and process nutrients, regulate water and ions-evolves in response to selection in natural environments is a central issue for understanding adaptation and organismal diversity. During the past two decades researchers have developed a theoretical and methodological framework for addressing this issue, and have applied this framework to a diverse set of natural systems. We have organized a society-wide symposium, entitled Selection and evolution of organismal performance in nature, for the January 2003 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, in Toronto, Ontario. The symposium brings together leading junior and senior researchers whose studies integrate analyses of organismal performance, phenotypic selection, and microevolution in nature. Collectively, these studies consider a diversity of taxa, habitats, components of performance, and empirical and theoretical approaches that address the question: What are the mechanisms and patterns of selection and microevolution of organismal performance in natural populations? The symposium will identify commonalities and differences in patterns of selection and evolution among different systems and performance traits; provide a forum for discussing methodological and conceptual challenges of studying performance in nature; and suggest new directions for the field. The proceedings of the symposium will be published in Integrative and Comparative Biology, the leading journal in the field of Integrative Biology.