History
As the name implies, evolutionary physiology is the product of what was at one time two distinct scientific disciplines. According to Garland and Carter, evolutionary physiology arose in the late 1970s, following "heated" debates concerning the metabolic and thermoregulatory status of dinosaurs (see physiology of dinosaurs) and mammal-like reptiles.
This period was followed by attempts in the early 1980s to integrate quantitative genetics into evolutionary biology, which had spill-over effects on other fields, such as behavioral ecology and ecophysiology. In the mid- to late-1980s, phylogenetic comparative methods started to become popular in many fields, including physiological ecology and comparative physiology. An 1987 volume titled "New Directions in Ecological Physiology" had little ecology but a considerable emphasis on evolutionary topics. It generated vigorous debate, and within a few years the National Science Foundation had developed a panel titled Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology.
Shortly thereafter, selection experiments and experimental evolution became increasingly common in evolutionary physiology. Most recently, "macrophysiology" has emerged as a subdiscipline, in which practitioners attempt to identify large-scale patterns in physiological traits (e.g., patterns of covariation with latitude) and their ecological implications.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Physiology
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)