Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Edited by Tom M. Fenchel, University of Copenhagen, Helsingor, Denmark, and approved July 11, 2016 (received for review May 18, 2016)
Abstract
The ability to navigate is a hallmark of living systems, from single cells to higher animals. Searching for targets, such as food or mates in particular, is one of the fundamental navigational tasks many organisms must execute to survive and reproduce. Here, we argue that a recent surge of studies of the proximate mechanisms that underlie search behavior offers a new opportunity to integrate the biophysics and neuroscience of sensory systems with ecological and evolutionary processes, closing a feedback loop that promises exciting new avenues of scientific exploration at the frontier of systems biology.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: ahein{at}princeton.edu.
Author contributions: A.M.H., F.C., D.R.B., R.S., and S.A.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Search algorithms: Organisms, evolution, ecology
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- Ecology
- Physical Sciences
- Mathematics
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