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

生物体如何执行关键任务的能力-运行，飞行，饲料，获取和处理营养物质，调节水和离子-在自然环境中的进化响应选择是理解适应和生物多样性的一个中心问题。 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各种自然系统。 我们已经组织了一个社会范围内的研讨会，题为选择和进化的有机体性能的性质，为2003年1月的社会综合和比较生物学年会，在多伦多，安大略。 研讨会汇集了领先的初级和高级研究人员，他们的研究整合了生物体性能，表型选择和自然界微进化的分析。 总的来说，这些研究考虑了多样性的类群，栖息地，性能的组成部分，以及解决这个问题的经验和理论方法：什么是自然种群中生物体性能的选择和微进化的机制和模式？ 研讨会将确定不同系统和性能特征之间的选择和进化模式的共性和差异;提供一个论坛，讨论在自然界中研究性能的方法和概念挑战;并为该领域提出新的方向。 研讨会的论文集将发表在综合生物学领域的领先期刊《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.