Frontiers in invertebrate physiology – grand challenge

Invertebrates have long been a symbol of the evil, but the increasing knowledge accumulated by many curious scientists has changed our view profoundly. Studying invertebrate physiology is now an exciting domain, because it provides on one hand insight into general principles of animal physiology, utilizing models with different degrees of complexity and on the other hand it allows studying evolutionary adaptations to a multitude of different lifestyles. Environmental constraints and basic construction principles have lead to an amazing variation of physiological solutions to breathe, to ingest and digest food, to reproduce and to communicate, and all this on the basis of a wide range of anatomical construction principles. Therefore a comparative approach to invertebrate physiology is extremely rich and can only be encouraged. The goal of Frontiers in Invertebrate Physiology is to cover a wide range of approaches from the molecular to the cellular, organismic and even the population level. Studies on model and non-model organisms and on all aspects of physiology will be published, to provide a forum for exchange of recent advances in the field