Harshness is not stress

Carsten Schradin; Lindelani Makuya; Neville Pillay; Rebecca Rimbach

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.005

Harshness is not stress

Trends Ecol Evol. 2023 Mar;38(3):224-227. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.005. Epub 2023 Jan 13.

Authors

Carsten Schradin¹, Lindelani Makuya², Neville Pillay², Rebecca Rimbach³

Affiliations

¹ CNRS, UMR7178, 67087 Strasbourg, France; School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Electronic address: carsten.schradin@iphc.cnrs.fr.
² School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
³ School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.

PMID: 36641304
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.005

Abstract

We must differentiate between stressful and harsh environments to understand animals' resilience to global change. Harshness is not stress. Stressful environments activate the physiological stress response to increase energy availability, while harsh environments inhibit the physiological stress response to save energy.

MeSH terms

Animals
Environment*
Stress, Physiological*