SICB Symposium: The Coevolution of Frugivorous Animals with the Natural Occurrence of Ethanol in Fermenting Fruit, January 5-9, 2004

本次研讨会汇集了来自不同背景的发言者，以解决乙醇在成熟和发酵的水果中的自然发生，以及伴随而来的各种食果类群对乙醇的生理和行为反应。直到最近，动物暴露于乙醇的分类群以外的人类和果蝇在很大程度上被视为偶然的。然而，在富含糖的水果中酵母和发酵过程的普遍存在表明，通过饮食摄入的低水平乙醇暴露历来是所有食果动物类群的特征。这一新的进化观点的发展已经被重新关注的果蝇突变体的使用，以确定那些潜在的醉酒和成瘾的分子途径。本次研讨会将解决乙醇暴露在各种非人类后生动物类群的自然模式，包括那些从事发酵的酵母，成熟的水果中发现酵母和糖，昆虫类群的代谢和受益于低水平的乙醇浓度，食果灵长类动物和其他脊椎动物类群依赖于成熟的水果作为其主要营养资源。因此，该计划是完全跨学科和综合性的，将其他看似无关的主题，如酵母生物学，水果成熟，灵长类动物祖先和果蝇的遗传变异结合起来。本次研讨会将提供相关的生态和进化背景，这些不同的现象，并将广泛说明暴露于天然乙醇在不同的非人类类群的比较生理和行为方面。这次研讨会是非常适合社会的成员为综合和比较生物学，现在强调更广泛的和进化的观点对不同的生物现象。虽然不是这次研讨会的主题，乙醇摄入的比较生物学研究可能与人类乙醇消费的进化解释有关。此外，研究生和博士后也积极参加该协会的年会，他们将有机会听取比较生物学这一新兴领域的工作人员的意见并与他们互动。

This symposium brings together speakers from diverse backgrounds to address the natural occurrence of ethanol within ripe and fermenting fruit, together with the concomitantly evolved physiological and behavioral responses to ethanol in diverse frugivorous taxa. Until recently, animal exposure to ethanol in taxa other than humans and Drosophila has been largely viewed as incidental. The ubiquity of yeasts and fermentative processes within sugar-rich fruit, however, suggests that low-level ethanol exposure via dietary ingestion has historically characterized all frugivorous animal taxa. Development of this novel evolutionary perspective has been paralleled by renewed interest in the use of Drosophila mutants to identify those molecular pathways underlying inebriation and addiction. This symposium will address natural patterns of ethanol exposure in a variety of non-human metazoan taxa, including those yeasts that engage in fermentation, ripe fruits within which are found both yeasts and sugars, insect taxa that metabolize and benefit from low-level ethanol concentrations, and frugivorous primates and other vertebrate taxa that depend on ripe fruits as their primary nutritional resource. This program is thus fully interdisciplinary and integrative, uniting otherwise seemingly unrelated themes such as yeast biology, fruit ripening, primate ancestry, and genetic variation in Drosophila. This symposium will provide the relevant ecological and evolutionary backgrounds to these diverse phenomena, and will illustrate broadly the comparative physiological and behavioral aspects of exposure to naturally occurring ethanol in diverse non-human taxa. This symposium is very appropriate for the membership of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, which now emphasizes broader and evolutionary perspectives on diverse biological phenomena. Although not a theme of this symposium, study of the comparative biology of ethanol ingestion may be of relevance to evolutionary interpretations of ethanol consumption by humans. Also, annual meetings of this society are well-attended by graduate students and postdocs who will have the opportunity to hear and interact with those working in this emerging field of comparative biology.