Frontiers in Population Biology: Report of a Workshop Prepared for the National Science Foundation, March 2005

摘要

Support for ecological and evolutionary research at the National Science Foundation expanded substantially during the past decade. To help guide this expansion, in October 1998 the Population Biology program at NSF hosted a workshop on 'Frontiers in Population Biology'. The report from that workshop identified and illustrated seven research themes of special interest in population biology, and described how these themes connect to genetics/genomics on the one hand and to environmental issues on the other. The report has been valuable to officers at NSF in shaping their programs and balancing their grant portfolios. Our understanding of evolutionary biology has advanced enormously in the past six years. The explosion of genomic information, rapid advances in computer and sensor technology, and the development of sophisticated new statistical and analytical approaches coupled with the recent reorganization of programs at NSF make this an appropriate time to evaluate progress and to identify areas in which new investment is warranted. In January 2005 a panel of experts met at NSF to identify areas that represent the frontiers for evolutionary research in the coming decade. The scope of this workshop was somewhat larger than that considered at the 1998 workshop, reflecting the range of evolutionary research and topics considered by Population and Evolutionary Processes, Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology, Animal Behavior and related programs at NSF. In addition to identifying nine thematic areas within evolutionary biology, the panel considered how questions within these areas relate to questions in molecular genetics and genomics, systematics, environmental sciences and other areas.