College of Engineering, Chubu University, Kasugai, Japan
Preface
Biological systems exhibit a vast array of pattern and form. The papers presented at this Workshop are primarily, but not exclusively, concerned with patterns in multi-cellular organisms. While these are products of self-organization induced by a variety of developmental processes, which are almost universally still unknown, they are also a result of evolutionary adaptation. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in both developmental and evolutionary aspects but the progress in each has been essentially independent of the other. Even to begin to understand the guiding principles in evolution we must understand the relationship between developmental processes and how they are affected by the environment, which, of course, brings in, among other things, the whole study of developmental constraints. The motive for this Workshop was to try and bring together specialists from both sides with a view to encouraging the mutual dissemination of relevant and related progress as it might apply to both development and evolutionary adaptation.
This volume contains the Proceedings of this Workshop which was held at Chubu University, Japan (February 21-22, October 16, 1992 and May 28, 1993). The invited talks cover a wide spectrum of topics, from the molecular level to multi-cellular organisms. The high quality of the presentations and lively and stimulating discussions were testament to the success of the Workshop. It is a great pleasure for us to be associated with this volume and we feel it makes a significant contribution to the aims we expressed above.
We would like to thank Chubu University for its generous financial support and for kindly providing the venue for the Workshop. We would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Daiko Foundation, Nagoya. We also thank the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Ryuji Takaki, for agreeing to publish the proceedings of this Workshop as Volume 8 of the journal "Forma". Finally we also wish to acknowledge the help of graduate students Y. Ohta and S. Ohya.
September, 1993
T. Sekimura, Chubu University, Kasugai, Japan
J. D. Murray, University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A.