About this Research Topic
Hormones have long been recognized as central players in directing complex life history transformations and orchestrating phenotypic plasticity. They can serve as flexible mediators, coupling environmental conditions to physiological and developmental processes, and allowing organisms to weigh decisions at key points of their life cycle. Hormones influence many critical decisions over the course of an animal’s life history, including the differentiation of sex and caste and the timing of metamorphosis and puberty. Recent advances have uncovered multiple pathways and mechanisms through which these endocrine factors function, highlighting how they may have been modulated through evolutionary time. Recent results have also shown how hormones can control organism fitness, local adaptations, and contribute to evolutionary novelties.
Our goal in this Research Topic is to bring together researchers at the interface of developmental biology, ecology, evolution, and endocrinology to contribute to a critical, interdisciplinary understanding of the role of hormones in animal development and evolution. We aim to explore the roles of a range of endocrine factors (thyroid hormone, ecdysone, insulin, cortisol, serotonin, sex hormones, and others) in determining life history strategies in a diversity of organisms.
We are interested in manuscripts focused on the roles of hormonal systems in determining and influencing organisms’ life history trajectories. Studies may take molecular, phenotypic, ecological, evolutionary, or genetic perspectives. We welcome a range of contributions (including original research articles, reviews, perspectives, and opinion pieces) on themes including but not limited to:
• Adaptive tradeoffs of life history trajectories
• New or emerging model systems for studying hormonal interactions or feedback
• Cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying developmental shifts
• Comparative functional manipulations of hormones during development
• Diversification of life histories
Our goal in this Research Topic is to bring together researchers at the interface of developmental biology, ecology, evolution, and endocrinology to contribute to a critical, interdisciplinary understanding of the role of hormones in animal development and evolution. We aim to explore the roles of a range of endocrine factors (thyroid hormone, ecdysone, insulin, cortisol, serotonin, sex hormones, and others) in determining life history strategies in a diversity of organisms.
We are interested in manuscripts focused on the roles of hormonal systems in determining and influencing organisms’ life history trajectories. Studies may take molecular, phenotypic, ecological, evolutionary, or genetic perspectives. We welcome a range of contributions (including original research articles, reviews, perspectives, and opinion pieces) on themes including but not limited to:
• Adaptive tradeoffs of life history trajectories
• New or emerging model systems for studying hormonal interactions or feedback
• Cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying developmental shifts
• Comparative functional manipulations of hormones during development
• Diversification of life histories
Keywords: hormones, ontogeny, phenotypic plasticity, life history, evolution, endocrine factors, metamorphosis, puberty
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
