Meeting Abstract
The ability of ectotherms to perform under seasonally relevant thermal stress has been a major and active sub-field within biology for >50 years, providing much insight into subjects ranging from adaptation and diversification to risk of establishment of invasive species and predicting winners and losers in the face of climate change. Given the importance of ectotherm thermal biology, there have been many efforts to build bridges between genotypes and seasonal phenotypes. We have learned many seasonal traits are the product of genotype x environment interactions, with strong layers of reversible plasticity for each trait. Yet, there are a wide diversity of results with respect to how selection shapes the genetic and physiological architectures of ectotherm seasonal responses. Even within a single population the genetic architecture and physiological traits implicated in seasonal adaptation vary substantially based on the context in which whole-organism phenotypes are studied. This wide diversity of results, often with discordant conclusions, currently hampers the development of general rules for ectotherm thermal and seasonal adaptation. Here I argue that an integrative biology perspective, with specific focus on carefully defining whole organism performance traits at a sub-organismal level is needed to ensure that equivalent seasonal traits are being considered, so genotype-phenotype mapping efforts across laboratories and systems are in fact comparing apples to apples to bridge the gap between genotypes and phenotypes.
