Why an ecological context?
The diversity of organismal forms, physiologies and evolved responses in nature results from millions of generations of evolution. While much has been learned from bringing organisms into the laboratory to study elements of their biology in isolation, ignoring the ecological context in which these elements arose and persist runs the risk of a suboptimal understanding of particular biological responses and processes.Ironically, but not unexpectedly, an ecological context has been most lacking for model organisms, the species from which a majority of our current knowledge on genetic mechanisms is based. This deficiency of course makes sense. These species were chosen as models in part because of the ease with which they could be reared away from their natural environments. The lack of a natural ecological context was considered a small price in return for the wealth of genetic information that could be obtained through laboratory-based analyses. While such an approach clearly has merit,
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