Dormancy
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Dormancy is a period in an organism's life cycle when growth, development, and (in animals) physical activity is temporarily suspended. This minimizes metabolic activity and therefore helps an organism to conserve energy. Dormancy tends to be closely associated with environmental conditions. Organisms can synchronize entry to a dormant phase with their environment through predictive or consequential means. Predictive dormancy occurs when an organism enters a dormant phase before the onset of adverse conditions. For example, photoperiod and decreasing temperature are used by many plants to predict the onset of winter. Consequential dormancy occurs when organisms enter a dormant phase after adverse conditions have arisen. This is commonly found in areas with an unpredictable climate. While very sudden changes in conditions may lead to a high mortality rate among animals relying on consequential dormancy, its use can be advantageous, as organisms remain active longer, and are therefore able to make greater use of available resources.
The most famous type of dormancy is hibernation, although most people use the term wrongly. Most people believe that bears hibernate. Bears do not hibernate. In fact there are very few mammals that do. Bears simply sleep the winter away, and there is a difference between that and true hibernation.
To explain the difference take the example of a true hibernator, a chipmunk. When a chipmunk enters hibernation its breathing slows from about 95 breaths per minute to one breath every 2 or 3 minutes. A chipmunk's body temperature also decreases from around 99°F to around 39°F, and its heart rate also drops drastically. All this slowing down of the system greatly reduces the amount of energy necessary for a chipmunk to survive, and this allows a chipmunk to overwinter on nothing but built up fat stores.
Bears, on the other hand, simply sleep the winter away. Their system does not slow down much more than it does in normal sleep. Bears will get up during the winter and hunt for food on occasion. Most females, in fact, wake up at least once during the winter. That is when they give birth. As soon as the cubs are born, they immediately suckle the mother and then they all go back to sleep.
There is one other important difference between sleeping and true hibernation. True hibernators, such as the chipmunk, are very hard to arouse from their dormant states. Bears, on the other hand, are easily aroused.
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[edit] Animal dormancy
[edit] Hibernation
Hibernation is a mechanism in many animals to escape cold weather and food shortage over the winter. Hibernation may be predictive or consequential. An animal prepares for hibernation by building up a thick layer of body fat during late summer and autumn which will provide it with energy during the dormant period. During hibernation the animal undergoes many physiological changes, including decreased heart rate (by as much as 95%) and decreased body temperature. Animals that hibernate include bats, ground squirrels and other rodents, mouse lemurs, the European Hedgehog and other insectivores, monotremes and marsupials.
[edit] Diapause
Diapause is a predictive strategy that is predetermined by an animal's genotype. Diapause is common in insects, allowing them to suspend development between autumn and spring, and in mammals such as the red deer, where a delay in attachment of the embryo to the uterine lining ensures that offspring are born in spring, when conditions are most favorable.
- See also: Mammalian embryonic diapause
[edit] Aestivation
Aestivation, also spelled estivation, is an example of consequential dormancy in response to very hot or dry conditions. It is common in invertebrates such as the garden snail and worm but also occurs in other animals such as the lungfish. The period of dormancy that bears experience during the winter is also called aestivation.
[edit] Brumation
Brumation is an example of dormancy in reptiles that is similar to hibernation.[1][2] It differs from hibernation in the metabolic processes involved.[3]
RES brumate beginning in the fall. They will often wake up to drink water and return to "sleep". They usually do not eat during this time, and can go weeks and months without food. However, they do need to drink water every 2-3 weeks or as often as they require. The brumation period is anywhere from 1-4 months depending on temperature, size and age of RES, and health. The first year small RES do not brumate but slow down and eat small portein snacks. Do not feed vegetation or fruit to young small RES in the fall months going into brumation, because their metabolism slows down and vegetation can rot in their tiny intestines. Warm water helps them to digest their food and allows them to have a bowel momement. Usually the second year is the best time for a young healthy RES to brumate. During this time they can gain weight and grow! The first time my RES went into full brumation, she woke up in the spring and was 2½ times her original size and her legs were puffed up and strong. Now my RES only brumates for short weeks at a time. Usually just waking to drink fresh water and an occasional light protein snack (dried shrimp). Her appetite is highest in October and drops to almost no feeding in January and February. I miss her during these times, but look forward to her in the spring, late March or April. I don't keep my RES confined. When she was small I kept her in a small class cassole dish inside a dry aquarium. Now that she is 8 years old, I have a 2-gallon plastic water box that she climbs in and out of and freely roams my apartment in search of a basking or napping site. In the winter, she finds a dark corner and snuggles under a plastic bag of clothing in the closet, or under the bed. She always has access to her fresh water box which I change frequently as needed. This is her drinking water and I always keep it clean for her since I do not use a filter pump. The water is deep enough for her to swim in and the box is shallow enough for her to climb in or out.
[edit] Torpor
Torpor is a short-term reduction of body temperature to an ambient level during periods of inactivity, often lasting only a few hours. Animals that experience torpor include small birds such as hummingbirds and some small mammals such as bats.
[edit] Bacterial dormancy
Certain bacteria produce metabolically inactive forms that can survive intensely adverse conditions unharmed; these are known as cysts or endospores. This is a consequential strategy. Inactivating these resistant forms is usually done using an autoclave (pressurized heating device).
[edit] Viral dormancy
Viruses of the family Herpesvirus are notable for remaining dormant within cells in the human body. See for example varicella zoster virus, which in an individual causes first chickenpox then shingles (herpes zoster). Concerning viruses this dormancy is often referred to as latency or a latent infection. HIV produces a latent infection in lymphocytes,[4] and at this stage in its life-cycle it is called a provirus.[5]
This should not be confused with clinical latency.
[edit] Plant dormancy
In plant physiology, dormancy is a period of arrested plant growth. It is a survival strategy exhibited by many plant species, which enables them to survive in climates where part of the year is unsuitable for growth, such as winter or dry seasons.
Plant species that exhibit dormancy have a biological clock that tells them to slow activity and to prepare soft tissues for a period of freezing temperatures or water shortage. After a normal growing season, dormancy can be brought on by decreasing temperatures, shortened day length, or a reduction in rainfall.
[edit] Dormant seeds
When a mature seed is placed under favorable conditions and fails to germinate, it is said to be dormant. There are two basic types of seed dormancy. The first is called seed coat dormancy or external dormancy, and is caused by the presence of a hard seed covering or seed coat that prevents water and oxygen from reaching and activating the embryo. The second type of seed dormancy is called embryo dormancy or internal dormancy, and is caused by a condition of the embryo which prevents germination (Black M, Butler J, Hughes M. 1987). The oldest seed that has been germinated into a viable plant was an approximately 1,300-yr-old lotus fruit, recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China. [6]
[edit] Tree dormancy
Tree species that have well-developed dormancy needs may be tricked to some degree, but not completely. For instance, if a Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) is given an "eternal summer" through exposure to additional daylight, it will grow continuously for as long as two years. Eventually, however, a temperate climate plant will automatically go dormant, no matter what environmental conditions it experiences. Deciduous plants will lose their leaves; evergreens will curtail all new growth. Going through an "eternal summer" and the resultant automatic dormancy is stressful to the plant and usually fatal. The fatality rate increases to 100% if the plant does not receive the necessary period of cold temperatures required to break the dormancy. Most plants will require a certain number of hours of "chilling" at temperatures between about 0 °C and 10 °C to be able to break dormancy (Bewley JD, Black M. (1994). )
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Reptilian Brumation
- ^ Brumation
- ^ Brumation
- ^ Bagasra O (2006). "A unified concept of HIV latency". Expert Opin Biol Ther 6 (11): 1135–49. doi:. PMID 17049012.
- ^ Margolis DM, Archin NM (2006). "Attacking HIV provirus: therapeutic strategies to disrupt persistent infection". Infect Disord Drug Targets 6 (4): 369–76. doi:. PMID 17168802.
- ^ Long-living lotus: germination and soil {gamma}-irradiation of centuries-old fruits, and cultivation, growth, and phenotypic abnormalities of offspring, 2002, American Journal of Botany Vol. 89:236-247.
Bewley JD, Black M. (1994). Seeds: physiology of development and germination, 2nd edn. New York, London: Plenum Press.
Black M, Butler J, Hughes M. (1987). Control and development of dormancy in cereals. In: Mares DJ, ed. Fourth International Symposium on Pre-Harvest Sprouting in Cereals, Boulder, Co. USA: Westview Press, 379-92.
Scholar team (2002) SQA Adv. Higher Biology; Environmental Biology. p 93-95 Heriot Watt University
