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

这次研讨会汇集了来自不同背景的演讲者，讨论成熟和发酵水果中乙醇的自然存在，以及在不同的食果性类群中伴随而来的对乙醇的生理和行为反应。直到最近，除了人类和果蝇之外，动物接触乙醇在很大程度上被视为偶然的。然而，酵母和发酵过程在富含糖分的水果中随处可见，这表明通过饮食摄入的低水平乙醇暴露在历史上是所有食果性动物分类群的特征。与这一新的进化观点的发展相平行的是，人们重新对使用果蝇突变体来识别醉酒和成瘾的分子途径产生了兴趣。本次研讨会将讨论各种非人类后生动物类别中乙醇暴露的自然模式，包括那些进行发酵的酵母，在其中发现酵母和糖的成熟水果，代谢并受益于低浓度乙醇的昆虫类别，以及以成熟水果为主要营养来源的食果灵长类和其他脊椎动物类别。因此，这个项目是完全跨学科和综合的，结合了其他看似无关的主题，如酵母生物学、水果成熟、灵长类祖先和果蝇的遗传变异。本次研讨会将为这些不同的现象提供相关的生态和进化背景，并将广泛说明在不同的非人类类群中暴露于天然乙醇的比较生理和行为方面。这次研讨会非常适合于综合和比较生物学学会的成员，该学会现在强调对各种生物现象的更广泛和进化的观点。尽管不是本次研讨会的主题，但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，该学会的年度会议有大量的研究生和博士后参加，他们将有机会听取和交流在这个新兴的比较生物学领域工作的人。

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.