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In biology, the biological cost or metabolic price is a measure of the increased energy metabolism that is required to achieve a function. Drug resistance in microbiology, for instance, has a very high metabolic price, [1] especially for antibiotic resistance. [2]
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of regeneration , asexual reproduction , metamorphosis , and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism.
In life history theory, the cost of reproduction hypothesis is the idea that reproduction is costly in terms of future survival and reproduction. This is mediated by various mechanisms, with the two most prominent being hormonal regulation and differential allocation of internal resources.
The developmental biology of invertebrates, plants, fungi, and other organisms is treated in other articles; e.g terms relating to the reproduction and development of insects are listed in Glossary of entomology, and those relating to plants are listed in Glossary of botany.
To construct an optimality model, the behavior must first be clearly defined. Then, descriptions of how the costs and benefits vary with the way the behavior is performed must be obtained. [1] Examples of benefits and costs include direct fitness measures like offspring produced, change in lifespan, time spent or gained, or energy spent and gained.
Sexual selection is an evolutionary concept that has been used to explain why, in some species, male and female individuals behave differently in selecting mates. In 1930, Ronald Fisher wrote The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, [3] in which he introduced the modern concept of parental investment, introduced the sexy son hypothesis, and introduced Fisher's principle.
In evolutionary biology, an evolutionary tradeoff is a situation in which evolution cannot advance one part of a biological system without distressing another part of it. In this context, tradeoffs refer to the process through which a trait increases in fitness at the expense of decreased fitness in another trait.
Development before birth, or prenatal development (from Latin natalis 'relating to birth') is the process in which a zygote, and later an embryo, and then a fetus develops during gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization and the formation of the zygote , the first stage in embryonic development which continues in fetal ...