Ecophysiology

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Ecophysiology or environmental physiology is a biological discipline which studies the adaptation of organism's physiology to environmental conditions.

Contents 1 Ecophysiology of plants 2 Ecophysiology of animals 3 Biochemical basis of adaptation 4 Climate change 5 Further reading 6 See also

[edit] Ecophysiology of plants

Plants are sessile and therefore cannot move away when environmental conditions turn unfavourable. Animals are able to escape heat, cold, drought, floods etc, but plants have to endure them. For this reason they have impressive array of genes which aid in adapting to changing conditions. The genome of black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) was sequenced in 2006 and is predicted to contain more than 40 000 genes. In comparison, the human genome is predicted to contain 20 000 - 25 000 genes. This disparity is at least partly explained by the fact that the plant needs to adapt to wider range of conditions.

Plant ecophysiology is concerned largely with two topics: mechanisms (how plants sense and respond to environmental change) and scaling or integration (how the responses to highly variable conditions -- for example, gradients from full sunlight to 95% shade within tree canopies -- are coordinated with one another, and how their collective effect on plant growth and gas exchange can be understood on this basis.

[edit] Ecophysiology of animals

George A. Bartholomew (1919-2006) was a founder of animal physiological ecology. He served on the faculty at UCLA from 1947 to 1989, and almost 1,200 individuals can trace their academiclineages to him [BartGen Tree]. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen (1915-2007) was also an important exponent and founder of this specific scientific field.

[edit] Biochemical basis of adaptation

[edit] Climate change

[edit] Further reading

• Bennett, A. F., and C. Lowe. 2005. The academic genealogy of George A. Bartholomew. Integrative and Comparative Biology 45:231-233.
• Bradshaw, S. D. 2003. Vertebrate ecophysiology: an introduction to its principles and applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. xi + 287 pp.
• Calow, P., ed. 1987. Evolutionary physiological ecology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 239 pp.
• McNab, B. K. 2002. The physiological ecology of vertebrates: a view from energetics. Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca and London. xxvii + 576 pp.
• Sibly, R. M., and P. Calow. 1986. Physiological ecology of animals: an evolutionary approach. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. 179 pp.
• Tracy, C. R., and J. S. Turner. 1982. What is physiological ecology? Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America (Bull. Ecol. Soc. Am.) 63:340-347. Definitions and Opinions by: G. A. Bartholomew, A. F. Bennett, W. D. Billings, B. F. Chabot, D. M. Gates, B. Heinrich, R. B. Huey, D. H. Janzen, J. R. King, P. A. McClure, B. K. McNab, P. C. Miller, P. S. Nobel, B. R. Strain.

[edit] See also

• Comparative physiology
• Evolutionary physiology
• Ecology
• Phylogenetic comparative methods
• Raymond B. Huey