Meeting Abstract
S8.3-3 Monday, Jan. 6 14:30 Ecological variation and hormone-mediated plasticity in Death Valley’s pupfishes: Insights into the dynamics and distinctiveness of phenotypic diversity LEMA, S.C.; CalPoly, San Luis Obispo slema@calpoly.edu
Phenotypic variation is generated via the complex orchestration of interacting factors that an organism experiences during development. Studies of hormone signaling systems can play a central role in understanding how those factors integrate during development, since hormonal systems both respond to conditions in an organism’s external environment and are well established as regulators of patterns of gene expression that, ultimately, underlie variation in morphological, physiological and behavioral traits. And yet, there are many gaps in our understanding of the mechanistic relationships between environment, hormones and phenotype, and several crucial questions remain unanswered about how hormone-mediated developmental processes link phenotypic traits to ecological variation via processes such as phenotypic plasticity. How do hormonal systems mediate developmental stage-specific malleability in phenotypes, and how does environmental variation at different stages of development contribute to phenotypic variation among individuals or populations? Does environmental experience have differential impacts on the signaling components (e.g., hormone, conversion enzyme, receptor) that comprise a hormone signaling pathway, and how does any such plasticity in those components contribute to flexibility or constraint in the coupling of correlated traits? And critically, how do adaptive, hormone-mediated phenotypes evolve if the hormone signaling pathways themselves are often plastic with environmental variation? These questions will be discussed in the light of studies on the phenotypic plasticity of Death Valley’s pupfishes (Cyprinodon spp.) in an effort to provide traction toward understanding plasticity and phenotypic diversity in an ecological and evolutionary context.
