Acclimatization is a reversible physiological and sometimes morphological adjustment of an organism to complex, naturally varying environmental conditions, occurring within an individual’s lifetime without changes to the genome. It involves modulation of existing cellular and systemic pathways—such as alterations in gene expression, enzyme activity, membrane composition, hormonal signaling, and organ function—to maintain homeostasis under new temperature, oxygen, salinity, photoperiod, or other abiotic regimes. Distinguished from genetic adaptation and laboratory acclimation, acclimatization typically proceeds over days to weeks, is often phenotypically plastic and graded, and its magnitude and limits critically influence organismal performance, stress tolerance, and ecological distribution.
Sunlight provides the energy necessary for photosynthesis and growth, but it also exposes plants to harmful ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation. Plants must therefore strike a delicate balance between growth and protection. By ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 1, 2026
0
30
The precise synthesis of proteins is considered essential for cellular function. Now, a team led by LMU biologists Dr. Benjamin Brandt and Professor Hans-Henning Kunz has demonstrated for the first time that plants can cope ...
Plants & Animals
May 28, 2026
0
9
Expose an animal to extreme physical stress, and the expectation is simple: It will break down. But when UC Riverside scientists subjected fruit flies to forces many times stronger than Earth's gravity—a condition called ...
Space Exploration
May 1, 2026
0
52
Humans adjust to changes in temperature by putting on a sweater or taking off layers. Plants adjust to temperature changes, in part, by switching the way they express the protein that performs the critical first step of photosynthesis, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 16, 2026
0
10
Earth is teeming with life: creatures big and small have spread and adapted to vastly different environments. Many animals can also change their physiology—how their bodies function—in response to local fluctuations. Just ...
Ecology
Mar 30, 2026
0
15
Dung beetles remove feces from wild animals in forests and thus inhibit the spread of parasites. They work the dung into the soil and thus supply nutrients to plants. They fulfill this task both in European commercial forests ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 25, 2026
0
7
Plants pause their growth during stress, then press play when conditions improve, helping them recover and live on to produce food, according to a new study published in New Phytologist. UBC researchers have pinpointed the ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 11, 2026
0
29
Corals living in coastal bays with strongly fluctuating temperatures and environmental conditions are better able to withstand heat and other stressors than their counterparts on more stable reefs. This is shown by research ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 18, 2026
0
27
In the next 75 years, surface sea temperatures may rise by up to 4°C, with increasingly frequent short-term marine heat waves also predicted. This could cause significant damage to our essential marine ecosystems, for example, ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 4, 2025
0
23
