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Shelford's law of tolerance is a principle developed by American zoologist Victor Ernest Shelford in 1911. It states that an organism 's success is based on a complex set of conditions and that each organism has a certain minimum, maximum, and optimum environmental factor or combination of factors that determine success. [ 1 ]
An organism's natural tolerance of heat is their basal thermotolerance. [1] Meanwhile, acquired thermotolerance is defined as an enhanced level of thermotolerance after exposure to a heat stress. [ 2 ]
The pygmy mammoth is an example of insular dwarfism, a case of Foster's rule, its unusually small body size an adaptation to the limited resources of its island home.. A biological rule or biological law is a generalized law, principle, or rule of thumb formulated to describe patterns observed in living organisms.
A tolerance interval (TI) is a statistical interval within which, with some confidence level, a specified sampled proportion of a population falls. "More specifically, a 100× p %/100×(1−α) tolerance interval provides limits within which at least a certain proportion ( p ) of the population falls with a given level of confidence (1−α)."
Environmental tolerance [ edit ] In 1834, C.A.S. Schulze , giving the first formal description of a tardigrade , Macrobiotus hufelandi , explicitly noted the animal's exceptional ability to tolerate environmental stress, subtitling his work "a new animal from the crustacean class, capable of reviving after prolonged asphyxia and dryness".
In biology [ edit ] Most biological processes are dependent upon enzymatic activity that can be impacted by the organism's body temperature, which in term is a function of the organism's metabolism and environment as each enzyme has a finite window in which it can function properly.
These wide ranges of tolerable temperatures are directly derived from the tolerance of a given eurythermal organism's proteins. [3] Extreme examples of eurytherms include Tardigrades , the desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularis), and green crabs (Carcinus maenas), however, nearly all mammals, including humans, are considered eurytherms.
Liebig's law has been extended to biological populations (and is commonly used in ecosystem modelling).For example, the growth of an organism such as a plant may be dependent on a number of different factors, such as sunlight or mineral nutrients (e.g., nitrate or phosphate).