Pathways to adulthood: environmental, developmental, and evolutionary influences on the ontogeny of form and function.
Organizers: Terry R. Dial, Mark C. Mainwaring, Ashley M. Heers
SYMPOSIUM OUTLINE
Pathways to adulthood. Our symposium focuses on the ontogeny of form and function, particularly in how conditions experienced during early life influence performance during adulthood. Early life conditions vary as a result of:
- the environment, because ontogeny is influenced by weather conditions including temperature, rainfall and wind, and by anthropogenic conditions such as climate change and pollution;
- evolutionary selection pressures in the form of parasitism, predation and several other external factors; and
- conditional effects on genetic expression in the form of social interactions, epigenetics, non-genetic parental effects including egg size variation, and cooperation and conflict with their parents and siblings. Such experiences during early life have long-lasting effects through to adulthood and are passed onto the offspring via transgenerational effects.
Technological advances provide new insights. Our understanding of the topic has advanced significantly in the past decade or so thanks to the use of a wide range of novel techniques that have examined links between early life conditions and adult performance in a range of taxa. Illustratively, just twenty years ago, we could not have GPS tracked locomotor performance in fledgling passerine birds on their long migratory journeys, and nor could we have manipulated genetic expression of developmental pathways to alter specific feeding mechanics in suction feeding fishes. But scientists are now using new technologies to quantify the details of organismal form and function as they unfold during development in ways that are changing how we understand the acquisition of the adult form.
A new vision. We will highlight attention on developing organisms and how ontogeny unfolds to produce an infinite array of phenotypes upon which selection acts. These are aims that, due to recent technological advances, are novel since the last SICB/ICVM symposium on ontogeny and locomotor performance and are thus changing the way that we understand the assembly and ecology of developing forms. We take a modern focus towards the ontogeny of form and function, bringing in studies that capture everything from the influences of climate change to differential genetic expression. We will also focus on the larger idea of understanding how organisms function, how they come to possess their form, and how the vast array of environmental experiences and genetic permutations unfold to produce a diversity of forms.
We have assembled researchers from diverse career stages who use various methodological approaches to ensure that all participants benefit from their attendance. We selected prominent international speakers (DiSanto and Nord) to provide authoritative contributions that will attract global attention.
Objective 1: Showcase the latest research findings. This symposium will highlight the findings of research that uses modern, cutting-edge approaches to examine the influence of early life experiences on performance, while also linking closely with broader themes such as the effects of climate change and pollution as well as phenotypic plasticity, life history evolution, parasitism and predation. It will therefore provide the presenters, audience members and the wider scientific community with a chance to discuss this topical issue and the exciting areas in which they think that future research should be directed (which will be further considered in the workshop).
Objective 2: Promote a diverse range of participants. In terms of scientists, we will broaden participation by making the symposium easily accessible. We have included under-represented speakers and will help them to cover their expenses. Despite the diversity of speakers, all the participants are at the forefront of their respective research fields, where they are using the latest technologies to examine novel questions.
Objective 3: Horizon scanning workshop. We will perform a horizon scanning event during the lunch time workshop that will help identify the most important issues that need to be addressed in relation to this topic. We will include the results of this horizon scan in our introductory paper in Integrative and Comparative Biology and in this way, it will spur a diverse array of future studies. We will include a diverse range of authors on this collaborative paper and thus, the participants in our symposium will benefit from attending this workshop.
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM
Session 1: Ontogeny of organisms
0815 Terry Dial Introduction
0830 Andreas Nord Grow warm, live cold - Long term consequences of a 
mismatch between developmental and adult environments
0900 Molly Womack Evolution, development and morphology in Anurans
0930 David Green Ontogeny of the primate shoulder girdle
1000 Coffee break
Session 2: Early life adversity and adult performance
1030 Mark Mainwaring David occasionally beats Goliath: the advantageous
performance of individuals raised in disadvantageous conditions
1100 Shawn Noren Building dolphin locomotor muscles throughout ontogeny to
support high performance swimming into adulthood
1130 Clare Rittschof Genomic and behavioral assessments of the impacts of early 
life on adult behavior and health in the honey bee, Apis mellifera
1200 Lunch workshop on horizon scanning
Session 3: Environmental influences on the acquisition of form
1330 Richard Carter Ontogeny of bat echolocation
1400 Prashant Sharma Arthropod development and evolution
1430 Dave Matthews Wnt signalling and craniofacial development in zebrafish
1500 Coffee break
Session 4: The development of morphology
1530 Valentina DiSanto Climate change and fish form and function 
1600 Ashley Heers Feathers aloft: adult-like flight in developing birds
1630 Ashley Heers Concluding comments