Areas of Research
Important areas of current research include:
- Organismal performance as a central phenotype (e.g., measures of speed or stamina in animal locomotion)
- Role of behavior in physiological evolution
- Physiological and endocrinological basis of variation in life history traits (e.g., clutch size)
- Functional significance of molecular evolution
- Extent to which species differences are adaptive
- Physiological underpinnings of limits to geographic ranges
- Role of sexual selection in shaping physiological evolution
- Magnitude of "phylogenetic signal" in physiological traits
- Role of pathogens and parasites in physiological evolution and immunity
- Application of optimality modeling to elucidate the degree of adaptation
- Role of phenotypic plasticity in accounting for species differences
- Mechanistic basis of trade-offs and constraints on evolution (e.g., putative Carrier's constraint on running and breathing)
- Limits on sustained metabolic rate
- Origin of allometric scaling relations or allometric laws (and the so-called metabolic theory of ecology)
- Individual variation (see also Individual differences psychology)
- Functional significance of biochemical polymorphisms
- Analysis of physiological variation via quantitative genetics
- Paleophysiology and the evolution of endothermy
- Human adaptational physiology
- Darwinian medicine
- Evolution of dietary antioxidants
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Physiology
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