Overview of the Symposium

Environmental change has been a constant challenge for all organisms in the history of life on earth. In the thousands of years since the last glacial maximum, organisms have been forced to adapt to a changing climate. The striking environmental variation we observe from the poles to the equator, from season to season, and from day to night have been met by both physiological and evolutionary adaptations that enable organisms to survive and reproduce. In recent years there has been growing interest and concern over how humans are imposing environmental change on the planet, and how organisms are responding to that change. Environmental change means very different things to different biologists, yet few would deny that the genetic and genomic mechanisms of adaptation to this change are central problems in biology.

The goals of the AGA Symposium for 2009 are to examine environmental change from the perspective of genetics and genomics. Leading researchers in evolutionary, population, and quantitative genetics will discuss how these fields integrate with ecological and geological perspectives on climate change. The symposium will run over three days, with morning and afternoon sessions featuring invited speakers, and an evening poster session that is open to all attendees. Sessions will be reserved for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to present their work, as selected from the list of poster abstracts.

The conference will be held at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. A clambake at the Blithewold mansion on the shores of Narragansett Bay will be held on the second evening and provides an opportunity for meeting attendees to converse in a relaxed and pastoral setting.

Some funds will be available to graduate students and postdocs on a competitive basis to defray the cost of attending the meeting.

The AGA Symposium is organized by David Rand.