Environmental physiology

Ecophysiology (from Greek οἶκος, oikos, "house(hold)"; φύσις, physis, "nature, origin"; and -λογία, -logia), environmental physiology or physiological ecology is a biological discipline that studies the adaptation of an organism's physiology to environmental conditions. It is closely related to comparative physiology and evolutionary physiology.

Plant ecophysiology is concerned largely with two topics: mechanisms (how plants sense and respond to environmental change) and scaling or integration (how the responses to highly variable conditions—for example, gradients from full sunlight to 95% shade within tree canopies—are coordinated with one another), and how their collective effect on plant growth and gas exchange can be understood on this basis.

In many cases, animals are able to escape unfavourable and changing environmental factors such as heat, cold, drought or floods, while plants are unable to move away and therefore must endure the adverse conditions or perish (animals go places, plants grow places). Plants are therefore phenotypically plastic and have an impressive array of genes that aid in adapting to changing conditions. It is hypothesized that this large number of genes can be partly explained by plant species' need to adapt to a wider range of conditions.

As with most abiotic factors, light intensity (irradiance) can be both suboptimal and excessive. Light intensity is also an important component in determining the temperature of plant organs (energy budget).The light response curve of net photosynthesis (PI curve) is particularly useful in characterising a plant's tolerance to different light intensities.

Suboptimal light (shade) typically occurs at the base of a plant canopy or in an understory environment. Shade tolerant plants have a range of adaptations to help them survive the altered quantity and quality of light typical of shade environments.

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