Main description:

Most organisms and populations have to cope with hostile environments, threatening their existence. Their ability to respond phenotypically and genetically to these challenges and to evolve adaptive mechanisms is, therefore, crucial. The contributions to this book aim at understanding, from a evolutionary perspective, the impact of stress on biological systems. Scientists, applying different approaches spanning from the molecular and the protein level to individuals, populations and ecosystems, explore how organisms adapt to extreme environments, how stress changes genetic structure and affects life histories, how organisms cope with thermal stress through acclimation, and how environmental and genetic stress induce fluctuating asymmetry, shape selection pressure and cause extinction of populations. Finally, it discusses the role of stress in evolutionary change, from stress induced mutations and selection to speciation and evolution at the geological time scale. The book contains reviews and novel scientific results on the subject. It will be of interest to both researchers and graduate students and may serve as a text for graduate courses.

Contents:

Extreme environments and adaptation.- The evolution of plants in metal-contaminated environments.- Responses of aquatic organisms to pollutant stress: Theoretical and practical implications.- Conifers from the cold.- Genetic variation and environmental stress.- Phenotypic plasticity and fluctuating asymmetry as responses to environmental stress in the butterflyBicyclus anynana.- Environmental stress and the expression of genetic variation.- Worldwide latitudinal clines for the alcohol dehydrogenase polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster: What is the unit of selection?.- Stress and metabolic regulation inDrosophila.- Acclimation and response to thermal stress.- Phenotypic and evolutionary adaptation of a model bacterial system to stressful thermal environments.- Ecological and evolutionary physiology of heat shock proteins and the stress response inDrosophila: Complementary insights from genetic engineering and natural variation.- High-temperature stress and the evolution of thermal resistance inDrosophila.- Stress, selection and extinction.- Genetic and environmental stress, and the persistence of populations.- Adaptation and extinction in changing environments.- Environmental stress and evolution: A theoretical study.- Stress, developmental stability and sexual selection.- Evolution and stress.- Genetic variability and adaptation to stress.- Stress-resistance genotypes, metabolic efficiency and interpreting evolutionary change.- The Plus ca change model: Explaining stasis and evolution in response to abiotic stress over geological timescales.