Ecological dimorphisms: An introduction to the symposium

A growing body of literature is devoted to understanding differencesbetween males and females in numerous behavioral, morphological,and physiological variables that do not appear to play a rolein sexual or fecundity selection. Despite the increasing attentionpaid to such ecological dimorphisms, there has thus far beenno attempt to consolidate or review studies in this area. Thissymposium comprises a series of papers that examine ecologicaldimorphisms from several diverse perspectives, spanning a rangeof ecological fields from functional morphology to behaviorand evolution of life-history. These studies show that genderexerts considerable effects on individual ecology, even outsideof the context of reproduction.     

PharmEcology: A pharmacological approach to understanding plant-herbivore interactions: an introduction to the symposium

A central goal in understanding the ecology and evolution of animals is to identify factors that constrain or expand breadth of diet. Selection of diet in many animals is often constrained by chemical deterrents (i.e., secondary metabolites) in available food items. The integration of chemistry and ecology has led to a significant understanding of the chemical complexity of prey (e.g., animals, plants, and algae) and the resultant foraging behavior of consumers. However, most of the literature on chemical defenses of marine and terrestrial prey lacks a mechanistic understanding of how consumers tolerate, or avoid, chemically-defended foods. In order to understand ecological patterns of foraging and co-evolutionary relationships between prey and consumers, we must advance our understanding of the physiological mechanisms responsible for chemical interactions. Such mechanistic studies require the integration of the discipline of pharmacology with ecology, which we call "PharmEcology." Pharmacology provides the tools and insight to investigate the fate (what the body does to a chemical) and action (what a chemical does to the body) of chemicals in living organisms, whereas ecology provides the insight into the interactions between organisms (e.g., herbivores) and their environment (e.g., plants). Although, the general concepts of pharmacology were introduced to ecologists studying plant-herbivore interactions over 30 years ago, the empirical use of pharmacology to understand mechanisms of chemical interactions has remained limited. Moreover, many of the recent biochemical, molecular and technical advances in pharmacology have yet to be utilized by ecologists. The PharmEcology symposium held at a meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in January of 2009 was developed to define novel research directions at the interface of pharmacology and ecology.     

"Population dynamics of crustaceans": introduction to the symposium

Crustaceans are a globally-distributed faunal group, found across all habitats from the equator to the poles. They are an ideal focal assemblage for assessment of the impacts of climatic change and anthropogenic disturbance on nonmodel systems, such as how sea currents influence the movements of zooplankton communities in the open ocean, or how ecosystem processes affect phytoplanktonic species with restricted geographic distributions across a cluster of island lakes that could be a new model system for studies of speciation. This symposium introduced early-career researchers working in the fields of phylogeography, ecogenomics, fisheries management, and ecosystem processes with the aim of highlighting the different genetic and ecological approaches to the study of population dynamics of freshwater, estuarine, and marine crustacean species.