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Starvation response. Starvation response in animals (including humans) is a set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes, triggered by lack of food or extreme weight loss, in which the body seeks to conserve energy by reducing metabolic rate and/or non-resting energy expenditure to prolong survival and preserve body fat and lean mass.
Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. [25][26][27] 2. Adaptedness is the state of being adapted: the degree to which an organism is able to live and reproduce in a given set of habitats. [28]
Hedonic adaptation is an event or mechanism that reduces the affective impact of substantial emotional events. Generally, hedonic adaptation involves a happiness "set point", whereby humans generally maintain a constant level of happiness throughout their lives, despite events that occur in their environment.
An Alpine chough in flight at 3,901 m (12,799 ft) Organisms can live at high altitude, either on land, in water, or while flying. Decreased oxygen availability and decreased temperature make life at such altitudes challenging, though many species have been successfully adapted via considerable physiological changes.
However, the human body has both short-term and long-term adaptations to altitude that allow it to partially compensate for the lack of oxygen. There is a limit to the level of adaptation; mountaineers refer to the altitudes above 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) as the death zone, where it is generally believed that no human body can acclimatize.
Neural adaptation or sensory adaptation is a gradual decrease over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. It is usually experienced as a change in the stimulus. For example, if a hand is rested on a table, the table's surface is immediately felt against the skin. Subsequently, however, the sensation of the ...
Optimal foraging theory predicts that this bee will forage in a way that will maximize its hive's net yield of energy. Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food. Although obtaining food provides the animal with energy, searching for and capturing the food require ...
Adaptive behavior (ecology) In behavioral ecology, adaptive behavior is any behavior that contributes directly or indirectly to an individual's reproductive success, and is thus subject to the forces of natural selection. [1] Examples include favoring kin in altruistic behaviors, sexual selection of the most fit mate, and defending a territory ...