Meeting Abstract

25.1  Wednesday, Jan. 5  The evolution of physiological systems and the emergent properties of regulatory networks COHEN, Alan A; Université de Sherbrooke aacohen1.bus@gmail.com

Evolutionary ecologists are interested in how selection on life history traits may be mediated by the underlying physiology. Unfortunately, many fundamental predictions for physiological investment have not been borne out. This appears to be due at least in part to the complex regulatory networks affecting physiological systems. These networks will mean that selection on physiological traits is often not straightforward: the effect on fitness of a change in immune investment, for example, will be due not only to changed susceptibility to disease, but also to all the downstream effects of the change on other inter-related aspects of physiology. The regulatory structures of physiological systems should have substantial consequences for their evolvability and their robustness to dysregulation. However, we know very little about these structures in an evolutionary context. Here I present a theory for how emergent properties of physiological systems will shape the evolution of physiology and life history traits. In particular, I explore the roles of forces such as constraints and evolutionary layering, as well as properties of systems such as complexity and redundancy. I consider methods for beginning to address this complexity, as well as impacts on the questions posed by physiological ecologists and comparative physiologists.