Meeting Abstract
The goal of many functional biologists is to understand how the structural components of an organism affect its ability to survive in a given environment. However, the links between form and function may be complex, such that the same structure or set of structures can contribute to multiple functional outputs or that a given functional output may rely on contributions from multiple structural components. In each case, integration between structures and functions is necessary to match organismal output with ecological demand. Therefore, the emergent integration of form and function is important for understanding the drivers of evolutionary change among organisms. This symposium brings together diverse researchers at the forefront of this research area to provide a range of examples demonstrating the broad applicability of these ideas, discuss methods and approaches for addressing complex form-function relationships, and provide insight into the role of selection in driving changes in structures and the links between structures and functions. These discussions will provide the background for a final discussion on new hypotheses and recommendations for future work in this field.
