EEB 2244 Lecture 4: Coping with Environmental Variation

• School: UConn
• Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Course: EEB 2244
• Professor: Emma Cross

Document Summary

Coping with environmental variation: temperature and water interactions between organisms and the physical environment that influences their survival and persistence and therefore their geographic ranges. Physiological ecology is the study of these interactions. Two options organisms have to cope with environmental change, tolerance and avoidance. An organism must either tolerate variances in their environment or avoid these extremes through a behavior or physiological change. Any physiological process, such as growth or photosynthesis, has a set of optimal environmental conditions most suitable to its functioning. Deviations from those optimal conditions cause a decrease in the rate of the process. variations in water availability. Deviations can be caused by stress such as increase or decrease in temperature or. Many organisms have the ability to adjust their physiology, morphology or behavior to lessen the effect of an environmental change and minimize the associated stress: acclimatization, usually a short-term, reversible process. Phenotype: all phenotypes result from genes interacting with environments.