Symposium - Going with the Flow: Ecomorphological Variation across Aquatic Flow Regimes to be held in San Antonio, TX on January 2-6, 2008.

了解有机体的形态或其构造与其环境之间的关系对于有机体生物学、生态学和进化生物学非常重要。 水生环境中的生命特别有趣，因为水带来的物理挑战和生物体适应的栖息地的多样性，从开阔的海洋和波浪冲刷的海岸到静止的湖泊和快速流动的溪流。 本次研讨会的目标是汇集一个生物学家（包括研究生和博士后研究人员）谁研究形态和水生栖息地之间的关系，在各种海洋和淡水脊椎动物，无脊椎动物和植物的多样化组。 本次研讨会将强调在不同流动条件下观察到的生物体的一般功能策略，包括研究生物体及其与环境相互作用的工程方法。 这次研讨会将提供一个机会，综合过去十年在这一领域的工作，以及展示最近才被详细探讨的系统的新研究。 本次研讨会的第二个目标将是突出几个新的技术，检查这样的系统，包括新技术描述的生物结构上的水流施加的力量，并量化生物形状的二维和三维。 本次研讨会的最终目标是为研究人员提供一个独特的论坛，以促进新的想法和跨学科合作。这次研讨会将产生若干更广泛的影响。 本次研讨会的举办地是综合与比较生物学学会（SICB）的年会，每年吸引约1000名与会者，其中50%以上是研究生和博士后研究人员，因此本次研讨会将吸引大量广泛的跨学科观众。 此外，本次研讨会的论文将发表在该领域的领先期刊《综合与比较生物学》上。 最后，这次研讨会将为几位年轻科学家提供一个与该领域领导人互动的重要机会。

Understanding the relationship between the morphology of an organism, or how it is built, and its environment is important for organismal biology, ecology and evolutionary biology. Life in aquatic environments is particularly interesting because of the physical challenges presented by water and the variety of habitats to which organisms have adapted, ranging from the open ocean and wave-swept shores to still lakes and fast-flowing streams. The goal of this symposium is to bring together a diverse group of biologists (including graduate students and post-doctoral researchers) who study the relationship between morphology and aquatic habitat in a variety of marine and freshwater vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants. This symposium will emphasize general functional strategies observed in organisms subjected to different flow conditions, including engineering approaches to the study of organisms and their interactions with the environment. This symposium will provide an opportunity to synthesize work in this area over the past decade, and new studies that showcase systems that have only recently been explored in detail. A second goal of this symposium will be to highlight several new techniques for examining such systems, including new technologies for describing forces exerted by water flow on biological structures and for quantifying biological shape in two- and three-dimensions. A final goal of this symposium is to provide a unique forum for discussion among researchers that fosters new ideas and interdisciplinary collaborations. This symposium will have several broader impacts. The venue for this symposium, the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), attracts approximately 1000 participants each year, of which over 50% are graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, thus this symposium will reach a large and broad interdisciplinary audience. In addition, papers from this symposium will be published in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, a leading journal in the field. Finally, this symposium will provide an important opportunity for several young scientists to interact with leaders in the field.