ADAPTATION OF MAN TO COLD CLIMATES

Plant adaptation to cold climates

In this short review, I will first summarize criteria by which environments can be considered "cold", with plant stature (size, height above ground) playing a central role for the climate actually experienced. Plants adapted to such environments have to cope with both extremes and with gradual influences of low temperature. The first requires freezing resistance, which is tightly coupled to dev...

Adaptation to temperate climates.

Only model organisms live in a world of endless summer. Fitness at temperate latitudes reflects the ability of organisms in nature to exploit the favorable season, to mitigate the effects of the unfavorable season, and to make the timely switch from one life style to the other. Herein, we define fitness as Ry, the year-long cohort replacement rate across all four seasons, of the mosquito, Wyeom...

“icehouse” (cold) Climates

“icehouse” (cold) Climates

Earth's climate has changed, within life-sustaining bounds, from warm to cool intervals, on scales from thousands to hundreds of millions of years. In the Phanerozoic Eon there have been three intervals of glaciation (Ordovician, Carboniferous and Cenozoic) lasting tens of millions of years, with ice down to sea level at mid-latitudes (Frakes et al., 1992; Crowell, 1999). These cool " ice-house...

“icehouse” (cold) Climates