Winging it again

[Thomas Daniel <danielt@u.washington.edu>]

THIS WEEK....  None other than our exhaulted (exhaused) chair, John
Wingfield will speak in the Mathbio Seminar

1230
Wed and Friday
114 Kincaid Hall

COME ON DOWN!

Hormonal Control of Life History Stages: An Opportunity for Mathematical
Approaches?

JOHN C. WINGFIELD, Dept. Zoology, Univ. Washington, Seattle, Wa.


All organisms pass through different life cycle stages, each with
characteristic morphology, physiology, and behavior. Variation in these
traits among individuals within a population has received considerable
attention, but mechanisms underlying changes in life cycle stages in
individuals have been less well investigated. Because most populations
live in seasonally fluctuating environments that include some
unpredictable events, individuals must adjust their behavior and
physiology to maximize their survival and reproductive success over a
wide range of environmental conditions. Theoretical approaches may allow
us to predict how individuals respond to their environment at the
proximate level and, conversely, predict how constraints imposed by
hormone control systems may limit the complexity of life cycles. I plan
to firstly introduce a "finite-state machine" approach to defining
complex life history stages as a way of providing a framework for
investigating common hormone control mechanisms. Secondly, I will focus
more specifically on a simple energy based scheme to describe how one
hormone-based system may provide a mechanism to customize an indivual’s
response to unique environmental (physical, internal and social)
conditions.