| title: | Stress and homeostasis in insects |
|---|---|
| reg no: | ETF5747 |
| project type: | Estonian Science Foundation research grant |
| subject: |
1.15. Zoology |
| status: | accepted |
| institution: | Institute of Zoology and Botany at Estonian University of Life Sciences |
| head of project: | Urmas Tartes |
| duration: | 01.01.2004 - 31.12.2007 |
| description: | All animals need optimal environmental conditions, under which maintaining of homeostasis takes least resources for living whereas nature presents often conditions, where environment is changing from optimal to suboptimal. In this case, maintaining the homeostasis needs more energy and the stress condition develop. The environmental conditions that influencees insect life processes in insects the most are the amount of carbon dioxide or oxygen of surrounding medium, thermal environment, and relations to other organisms. We hypothesise, that in moderate stress conditions, the coordination between organ systems must be more pronounced to conserve energy. We find, that exploring the coordination between circulatory and respiratory systems and active body movements in real time under stress factors is a good opportunity to analyse maintaining of homeostasis through coordination of different organ systems. As the adaptations may occur also on enzymatic level, there is also need to investigate biochemical processes. We plan to test effect of following stress factors to functioning of abovementioned organ systems: 1) hypoxia and hypercapnia (decreased oxygen and increased carbon dioxide levels); 2) high temperature (low temperature is a less profound stressor as we are not dealing with tropical insects), and 3) effect of other organisms (population density, predators). To elucidate effect of different body movements on gas exchange and circulation, morphometric analysis of these movements is carried out. The outcome of this work enables further development of our understanding of homeostasis. |
| project group | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no | name | institution | position | |
| 1. | Dalial Freitak | TÜ ZHI | vanemlaborant | |
| 2. | Aare Kuusik | EPMÜ TKI | vanemteadur | |
| 3. | Urmas Tartes | Institute of Zoology and Botany at Estonian University of Life Sciences | director | |
| 4. | Alo Vanatoa | EPMÜ ZBI | teadur | |