Cossins and Somero hope that the papers in this volume will inspire comparative and integrative physiologists to use genomic technologies to learn how the different parts of an organism work together and to integrate this information to understand the organism as a whole and how it responds to changes in its environment. The technological advances that have been made are making it possible to deal with thousands or genes simultaneously and to discover how they interact with each other. In addition, `we have a much more discrete ability to use the knowledge from wellknown species to learn more about unusual, yet related, species', says Cossins.