A stenotherm (from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
στενός ''stenos'' "narrow" and θέρμη ''therme'' "heat") is a species or living organism capable of surviving only within a narrow temperature range. This specialization is often found in organisms that inhabit environments with relatively stable environments, such as deep sea environments or polar regions.
The opposite of a stenotherm is a
eurytherm, an organism that can function across a wide range of body temperatures. Eurythermic organisms are typically found in environments with significant temperature variations, such as temperate or tropical regions.
The size, shape, and composition of an organism's body can influence its temperature regulation, with larger organisms generally maintaining a more stable internal temperature than smaller ones.
Examples
''
Chionoecetes opilio'' is a stenothermic organism, and temperature significantly affects its biology throughout its life history, from embryo to adult. Small changes in temperature (< 2 °C) can increase the duration of egg incubation for ''C. opilio'' by a full year.
[Moriyasu and Lanteigne, 1998 M. Moriyasu and C. Lanteigne, Embryo development and reproductive cycle in the snow crab, ''Chionoecetes opilio'' (Crustacea: Majidae).]
See also
*
Ecotope
Ecotopes are the smallest ecologically distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying lan ...
References
Ecology
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