Nature and function

One of the main scientific challenges of the new century is to assess the impact of people on the environment, including climate, and the effect that the changes we make will have on other living organisms. The key consideration is the ability of plants and animals to adapt to these man-made changes. As well as the current priority given in biology to the 'post-genomic' approach — which aims to determine the functions of the genes identified in genomic studies — it is necessary to study how whole organisms, species and communities react to environmental constraints. Ecophysiology, the science of how human, animal and plant populations behave in relation to these constraints, will have a significant part to play.

Behavioural, population and evolutionary studies, with a few notable exceptions, do not take into account the physiological boundaries within which organisms operate. It is in conjunction with these different fields of investigation that ecophysiology, which integrates behavioural and physiological responses, finds its particular appeal. Because of the innumerable interactions between living organisms and their environments, the efforts of ecophysiologists must be combined with those of all biologists who study animals, populations or ecosystems. This emerging integrative biology will interact with the integrative approach of those studying genes and genomes, giving rise to 'molecular ecology' and ultimately revealing the functional responses of organisms to particular environmental cues.