2022 Spring Seminar Series Presents
Dr. Michael Moore
Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow,
Living Earth Collaborative Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Mid‐Life Crises: how trade‐offs between life‐cycle stages constrain physiological and morphological adaptation
Many organisms encounter a fundamental problem as they proceed through their life cycles: juveniles and adults must adapt to very different demands from each other. Biologists dating back to Darwin have wondered how physiology and morphology evolve to meet the contrasting demands that organisms confront across development. Nevertheless, little is known about how trade‐offs across the life cycle have affected physiological and morhpological adaptation in the past, or if this conflict will hinder responses in the future. In this seminar, Dr. Moore discusses how his research on dragonflies reveals: 1) when physiological and morphological evolution can occur independently between life‐cycle stages, and 2) the evolutionary consequences when life‐cycle stages are not decoupled from one another.