BIOL 2060 Lecture 2: Unit 2 (online and textbook)
8 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Overview: temperature relations: body temperature (heat gain vs. heat loss) of an organism depend on morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations, water relations: relevance of vapour pressure deficit and water potential to water relations of terrestrial organisms. Balancing of water budgets: energy and nutrient relations: functional response curves in animals and plants and optimal foraging theory in animals and the theory of optimal allocation in plants. Organisms respond to fluctuation as regulators or conformers. There is a continuum between regulators and conformers: perfect regulators have control over internal environments over their range of tolerance for a specific condition, whereas perfect conformers have no response mechanisms to that condition. Organisms may be a regulator for one condition and a conformer for another. Homeostasis: the tendency towards a stable equilibrium as maintained by physiological processes keeping a constant internal environment despite outer environmental conditions. Conformers: organism that allows their internal conditions to fluctuate depending on their environmental conditions.
