Meeting Abstract
The world that animals live in is constantly changing. Depending upon where they live, they may need to respond to daily changes in variables such as temperature or tidal cycles, or they may primarily respond to longer term, seasonal changes. For many animals, these changes in their environment result in concomitant changes in their physiological and behavioral state. And while physiological responses to environmental variability is widely acknowledged, much of the research that has advanced our understanding of the regulation of key traits are often conducted in ways that try to minimize variation. Whether conducted in the laboratory or the field, these studies have provided critical information about the mechanistic relationships that influence physiology and behavior that, in turn, influence variation in individual fitness, despite providing limited information on the direct effects of environmental variation. It is clear that we now need research approaches that explore how natural variation in the wild, or how experimentally mimicking nature under more controlled settings, affects physiological mechanisms and responses to this variation. Understanding why and how animals cope with environmental changes is key to recognizing the sources and subsequent responses that give rise to the variation that selection can act upon, particularly as environments change with a changing climate. The goal of this symposium is to highlight important insights that are gained when studies take into account these, often dramatic, changes across daily and seasonal time scales, and to stimulate future research that is needed to better understand how animals may cope with a changing climate.
