Symposium: Evolutionary Impacts of Seasonality

Organisms living in seasonal environments experience fluctuating selection pressures that influence their ecology and physiology, and drive their evolution. Classic work by Dobzhansky and early researchers identified seasonal fluctuations as a potentially important mechanism maintaining genetic polymorphism in natural populations, and studies of seasonal polyphenism and phenology have advanced our understanding of life history evolution. Recent advances in the field are moving towards greater understanding of the impacts of seasonality on genomic and physiological evolution, promising to illuminate the importance of seasonality in generating adaptation and constraining evolution. We thus propose to bring together experts from across these disparate fields, with complementary expertise covering the entire span of the biological hierarchy and the breadth of terrestrial eukaryotes. The goal of this symposium is to identify areas of inquiry across disciplines and study systems that can most benefit from cross-pollination with other disciplines. We aim to produce a roadmap to unifying seasonality research by highlighting transformative research questions emerging from research across organisms, and to suggest how this research can best be integrated, conceptually and quantitatively.

Sponsors: DCPB, DCE, DIZ

Organizers

• Caroline Williams, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, cmw@berkeley.edu
• Gregory Ragland, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA, gragland@ksu.edu

Speakers

S4-1 Friday, Jan. 6, 07:50 RAGLAND, GJ*; WILLIAMS, CM:

Introduction to Evolutionary Impacts of Seasonality symposium

S4-2 Friday, Jan. 6, 08:00 CHEVIRON, ZA*; STAGER, M; SWANSON, DL:

Comparative transcriptomics of seasonal phenotypic flexibility in three species of North American resident songbirds.

S4-3 Friday, Jan. 6, 08:30 KRIEGSFELD, Lance, J*; JENNINGS, Kimberly, J; MANON, Chasles; CHO, Hweyryoung; MASON, Alex, O; KELLER, Matthieu:

Seasonal control of reproductive function by two, complementary RFamide peptides

S4-4 Friday, Jan. 6, 09:00 SHELDON, K.S.:

The impact of temperature variation on physiology and distributions of tropical and temperate ectotherms

S4-5 Friday, Jan. 6, 09:30 BUCKLEY, LB*; ARAKAKI, A; KHAROUBA, HM; KINGSOLVER, JG:

Insect Development, Thermal Plasticity and Fitness Implications in Changing, Seasonal Environments

S4-6 Friday, Jan. 6, 10:30 HUMPHRIES, Murray M*; MENZIES, Allyson K; STUDD, Emily K:

The seasons of things and the purposes of time: seasonal variation in morphology, metabolism, and behaviour in boreal endotherms

S4-7 Friday, Jan. 6, 11:00 VARPE, Øystein:

Life history adaptations to seasonality

S4-8 Friday, Jan. 6, 11:30 HEREFORD, J:

Physiological and phenological correlates of the seasonal niche in a C3-C4 intermediate

S4-9 Friday, Jan. 6, 13:30 RAJPUROHIT, S; TURCOTTE, M; PETROV, D; LEVINE, J; SCHMIDT, P*:

Rapid Adaptation to Seasonality in Drosophila

S4-10 Friday, Jan. 6, 14:00 VISSER, M.E.*; VERHAGEN, I.C.; RAMAKERS, J.; LAINE, V.N.; GIENAPP, P.:

The evolution of mechanisms underlying seasonal timing of avian reproduction

S4-11 Friday, Jan. 6, 14:30 DONOHUE, Kathleen*; EDWARDS, Brianne; BURGHARDT, Liana:

Interpreting variation in dormancy and germination time under diverse seasonal conditions

S4-12 Friday, Jan. 6, 15:00 WILLIAMS, Caroline M*; RAGLAND, Gregory J:

Evolutionary impacts of seasonality: synthesis and directions forward