TY - JOUR
T1 - Applied Functional Biology: Linking Ecological Morphology to Conservation and Management
AU - McElroy, Eric J.
AU - Sustaita, Diego
AU - McBrayer, Lance D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/6/19
Y1 - 2020/6/19
N2 - Many researchers work at the interface of organisms and environment. Too often, the insights that organismal, or functional, biologists can bring to the understanding of natural history, ecology, and conservation of species are overlooked. Likewise, natural resource managers are frequently focused on the management of populations and communities, while ignoring key functional traits that might explain variation in abundance and shifts in species composition at these ecological levels. Our intention for this symposium is two-fold: (1) to bring to light current and future research in functional and ecological morphology applicable to concerns and goals of wildlife management and conservation and (2) to show how such studies can result in measurable benchmarks useful to regulatory agencies. Symposium topics reveal past, present, and future collaborations between functional morphologists/biomechanists and conservation/ wildlife biologists. During the SICB 2020 Annual Meeting, symposium participants demonstrated how data gathered to address fundamental questions regarding the causes and consequences of organismal form and function can also help address issues of conservation and wildlife management. Here we review how these, and other, studies of functional morphology, biomechanics, ecological development morphology and performance can inform wildlife conservation and management, principally by identifying candidate functional traits that have clear fitness consequences and population level implications.
AB - Many researchers work at the interface of organisms and environment. Too often, the insights that organismal, or functional, biologists can bring to the understanding of natural history, ecology, and conservation of species are overlooked. Likewise, natural resource managers are frequently focused on the management of populations and communities, while ignoring key functional traits that might explain variation in abundance and shifts in species composition at these ecological levels. Our intention for this symposium is two-fold: (1) to bring to light current and future research in functional and ecological morphology applicable to concerns and goals of wildlife management and conservation and (2) to show how such studies can result in measurable benchmarks useful to regulatory agencies. Symposium topics reveal past, present, and future collaborations between functional morphologists/biomechanists and conservation/ wildlife biologists. During the SICB 2020 Annual Meeting, symposium participants demonstrated how data gathered to address fundamental questions regarding the causes and consequences of organismal form and function can also help address issues of conservation and wildlife management. Here we review how these, and other, studies of functional morphology, biomechanics, ecological development morphology and performance can inform wildlife conservation and management, principally by identifying candidate functional traits that have clear fitness consequences and population level implications.
UR - https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/biology-facpubs/276
UR - https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icaa076
U2 - 10.1093/icb/icaa076
DO - 10.1093/icb/icaa076
M3 - Article
SN - 1540-7063
VL - 60
JO - Integrative and Comparative Biology
JF - Integrative and Comparative Biology
ER -