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Concept

Comparative physiology

Comparative physiology is a subdiscipline of physiology that studies and exploits the diversity of functional characteristics of various kinds of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary physiology and environmental physiology. Many universities offer undergraduate courses that cover comparative aspects of animal physiology. According to Clifford Ladd Prosser, "Comparative Physiology is not so much a defined discipline as a viewpoint, a philosophy." Originally, as narrated in a recent history of the field, physiology focused primarily on human beings, in large part from a desire to improve medical practices. When physiologists first began comparing different species it was sometimes out of simple curiosity to understand how organisms work but also stemmed from a desire to discover basic physiological principles. This use of specific organisms convenient to study specific questions is known as the Krogh Principle. C. Ladd Prosser, a founder of modern comparative physiology, outlined a broad agenda for comparative physiology in his 1950 edited volume (see summary and discussion in Garland and Carter):

To describe how different kinds of animals meet their needs. This amounts to cataloging functional aspects of biological diversity, and has recently been criticized as "stamp collecting" with the suggestion that the field should move beyond that initial, exploratory phase.
The use of physiological information to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships of organisms. In principle physiological information could be used just as morphological information or DNA sequence is used to measure evolutionary divergence of organisms. In practice, this has rarely been done, for at least four reasons: physiology doesn't leave many fossil cues, it can't be measured on museum specimens, it is difficult to quantify as compared with morphology or DNA sequences, and physiology is more likely to be adaptive than DNA, and so subject to parallel and convergent evolution, which confuses phylogenetic reconstruction.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_physiology

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Concepts associés (3)

Evolutionary physiology

Evolutionary physiology is the study of the biological evolution of physiological structures and processes; that is, the manner in which the functional characteristics of individuals in a population of organisms have responded to natural selection across multiple generations during the history of the population. It is a sub-discipline of both physiology and evolutionary biology. Practitioners in the field come from a variety of backgrounds, including physiology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.

Phylogenetic comparative methods

Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses. The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species. However, the fact that closely related lineages share many traits and trait combinations as a result of the process of descent with modification means that lineages are not independent.

Écophysiologie

L’écophysiologie est une discipline de la biologie, à la frontière entre l'écologie et la physiologie, qui étudie les réponses comportementales et physiologiques des organismes à leur environnement. Le terme écophysiologie provient de la contraction des mots écologie et physiologie. Écophysiologie Écophysiologie végétale Physiologie Sidney Donald Bradshaw, Vertebrate ecophysiology : an introduction to its principles and applications, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, 287 p.

To describe how different kinds of animals meet their needs. This amounts to cataloging functional aspects of biological diversity, and has recently been criticized as "stamp collecting" with the suggestion that the field should move beyond that initial, exploratory phase.
The use of physiological information to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships of organisms. In principle physiological information could be used just as morphological information or DNA sequence is used to measure evolutionary divergence of organisms. In practice, this has rarely been done, for at least four reasons: physiology doesn't leave many fossil cues, it can't be measured on museum specimens, it is difficult to quantify as compared with morphology or DNA sequences, and physiology is more likely to be adaptive than DNA, and so subject to parallel and convergent evolution, which confuses phylogenetic reconstruction.