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Morphological adaptations observed at the cellular level include atrophy, hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and metaplasia. [1] In the medical context, outside of specialized branches of biomedicine , morphological adaptations are not always referenced to the fundamental cellular level, but are observed and assessed at the level of tissues and organs .
Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. [1] [2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be ...
The etymology of the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ), meaning "form", and λόγος (lógos), meaning "word, study, research". [2] [3]While the concept of form in biology, opposed to function, dates back to Aristotle (see Aristotle's biology), the field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790) and independently by the German anatomist ...
Physiological adaptations permit the organism to perform special functions such as making venom, secreting slime, and phototropism, but also involve more general functions such as growth and development, temperature regulation, ionic balance and other aspects of homeostasis. Adaptation affects all aspects of the life of an organism.
[1] [2] The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. [ citation needed ] An organism's phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism's genetic code (its genotype ) and the ...
Ecomorphology or ecological morphology is the study of the relationship between the ecological role of an individual and its morphological adaptations. [1] The term "morphological" here is in the anatomical context.
Comparative physiologists often study organisms that live in "extreme" environments (e.g., deserts) because they expect to find especially clear examples of evolutionary adaptation. [4] One example is the study of water balance in desert-inhabiting mammals, which have been found to exhibit kidney specializations.
An ecotype refers to organisms which belong to the same species but have different phenotypical characteristics as a result of their adaptations to different habitats. [6] Differences between these two groups is attributed to phenotypic plasticity and are too few for them to be termed as wholly different species. [ 7 ]