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American Zoologist 1989 29(3):1141-1155; doi:10.1093/icb/29.3.1141
© 1989 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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"I'll see it when I believe it!"*: Investigating Nervous System/Reproductive System Interactions in Animal Organisms1

LOUISE RUSSERT-KRAEMER
Department of Zoology, University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701

From the time of August Weismann's characterization of fundamental differences between the role of the reproductive system (to preserve the "immortal" germplasm) and the other, somatic tissues of the organism (to maintain the organism) biologists have inherited an interesting organismic conundrum. How, indeed, are we to understand the relationship between the somatic systems (especially the nervous system—that characterize the animal organism) and the reproductive system, within that organism? In this paper it is argued that: (1) neuron-gamete-organism interactions are essential, organismic phenomena that have scarcely begun to be investigated; (2) with reference to at least three different kinds of animals it is possible to determine developmental, structural, functional and behavioral relationships between the (species-oriented) reproductive systems, and the (individual, organism-oriented) nervous systems of those animals; and (3) results of such investigations make sense only in terms of the peculiar evolutionary history and environmental adaptations of specific kinds of animal organisms.


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