"I'll see it when i believe it!": Investigating nervous system/reproductive system interactions in animal organisms

Abstract

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. © 1989 by the American Society of Zoologists.