Environmental temperature varies in time and space on timescales ranging from a few hours to long-term climate change. Organisms are therefore continually challenged to regulate and maintain functional capacities as their thermal environment changes. This volume brings together many of the leading workers in thermal biology, with backgrounds spanning the disciplines of molecular biology, cell biology, physiology, zoology, ecology and evolutionary biology, to discuss the responses of a wide range of species to temperature change at all scales of organization, ranging through the molecular, cellular, organismal, population and ecosystem levels. The volume provides an important and comprehensive contribution to the study of temperature adaptation, which, given the concern about global climate change, will provide much to interest a wide range of biologists.

Environmental temperature varies in time and space on timescales ranging from a few hours to long-term climate change. Organisms are therefore continually challenged to regulate and maintain functional capacities as their thermal environment changes. This volume brings together many of the leading workers in thermal biology, with backgrounds spanning the disciplines of molecular biology, cell biology, physiology, zoology, ecology and evolutionary biology, to discuss the responses of a wide range of species to temperature change at all scales of organization, ranging through the molecular, cellular, organismal, population and ecosystem levels. The volume provides an important and comprehensive contribution to the study of temperature adaptation, which, given the concern about global climate change, will provide much to interest a wide range of biologists.

The past fifty years have witnessed major achievements in ecological physiology, the study of physiological adaptations that improve survival or permit organisms to exploit extreme environments. New Directions in Ecological Physiology, first published in 1988, outlines conceptual approaches to the study of physiological adaptation in animals, approaches that will stimulate the continued growth of this field. Twenty leading ecological physiologists and evolutionary biologists have contributed critical evaluations of developments in their respective areas, highlighting major conceptual advances as well as research questions yet to be answered. The volume is organized into three parts: The first deals with comparisons of different species and populations; the second, with comparisons of individuals within a population; the last, with interacting physiological systems within individual animals. New Directions in Ecological Physiology, by encouraging critical debate about general issues and directions of growth in this field, is intended to foster the invigoration of ecological physiology in particular and of organismal biology in general.