Adaptation and Evolution of Biological Materials Symposium to be held January 5

The Adaptation and Evolution of Biological Materials Symposium, held by the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (SICB), will be held January 5, 2019, in Tampa, Fla., USA. It is part of the SICB Annual Meeting 2019, to be held January 3–7.

Although the characterization of biomaterials performance has progressed in the past decades, our understanding of how performance varies and is shaped across ecology or evolutionary history lags behind. How do materials respond, adapt, and evolve with the environment and organisms? The speakers address many questions across a range of systems and organizational scales, from skeletal form-function evolution to material-mediated vibration sensing, structural color, and plant and animal anchoring tools. The symposium highlights emerging work on structure–function relationships and fabrication of biological materials, while showcasing how modern materials characterization tools can augment integrative studies of organismal adaptation and evolution. It comprises lectures and a lunch workshop.

The registration deadline for presenters is November 6. Discounted preregistration for attendees ends December 4. More information can be accessed from the event website at www.sicb.org/meetings/2019.