Understanding the relationship between the morphology of an organism, or how it is built, and its environment is important for organismal biology, ecology and evolutionary biology. Life in aquatic environments is particularly interesting because of the physical challenges presented by water and the variety of habitats to which organisms have adapted, ranging from the open ocean and wave-swept shores to still lakes and fast-flowing streams. The goal of this symposium is to bring together a diverse group of biologists (including graduate students and post-doctoral researchers) who study the relationship between morphology and aquatic habitat in a variety of marine and freshwater vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants. This symposium will emphasize general functional strategies observed in organisms subjected to different flow conditions, including engineering approaches to the study of organisms and their interactions with the environment. This symposium will provide an opportunity to synthesize work in this area over the past decade, and new studies that showcase systems that have only recently been explored in detail. A second goal of this symposium will be to highlight several new techniques for examining such systems, including new technologies for describing forces exerted by water flow on biological structures and for quantifying biological shape in two- and three-dimensions. A final goal of this symposium is to provide a unique forum for discussion among researchers that fosters new ideas and interdisciplinary collaborations. This symposium will have several broader impacts. The venue for this symposium, the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), attracts approximately 1000 participants each year, of which over 50% are graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, thus this symposium will reach a large and broad interdisciplinary audience. In addition, papers from this symposium will be published in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, a leading journal in the field. Finally, this symposium will provide an important opportunity for several young scientists to interact with leaders in the field.
