biology
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
External Websites
printPrint
Please select which sections you would like to print:
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
External Websites
Written by
William Vernon Mayer
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article History
African lungfish
See all media
- Related Topics:
- hibernation
- diapause
- torpor
- estivation
- seed dormancy
See all related content →
dormancy, state of reduced metabolic activity adopted by many organisms under conditions of environmental stress or, often, as in winter, when such stressful conditions are likely to appear.
There are few environments in which organisms are not subject to some kind of stress. Some animals migrate vast distances to avoid unfavourable situations; others reduce environmental stresses by modifying their behaviour and the habitats (immediate surroundings) that they occupy. Arctic lemmings, for example, are able to avoid severe winter weather by confining their life in winter to activities beneath the snow cover. Still another mechanism used by some organisms to avoid stressful environmental conditions is that of dormancy, during which an organism conserves the amount of energy available to it and makes few demands on its environment. Most major groups of animals as well as plants have some representatives that can become dormant. Periods of dormancy vary in length and in degree of metabolic reduction, ranging from only slightly lower metabolism during the periodic, short-duration dormancy of deep sleep to more extreme reductions for extended periods of time.
General observations
Value of dormancy
In terms of evolution, dormancy seems to have evolved independently among a wide variety of living things, and the mechanisms for dormancy vary with the morphological and physiological makeup of each organism. For many plants and animals, dormancy has become an essential part of the life cycle, allowing an organism to pass through critical environmental stages in its life cycle with a minimal impact on the organism itself. When lakes, ponds, or rivers dry up, for example, aquatic organisms that can enter a period of dormancy survive, while others perish. Moreover, animals that can become dormant during the extreme cold of winter can extend their ranges into regions where animals incapable of dormancy cannot live. Dormancy also ensures that these animals will be free from competition during their periods of activity. Thus, dormancy is an adaptive mechanism that allows an organism to meet environmental stresses and to take advantage of environmental niches that otherwise would be untenable at certain times.
Causes of dormancy
The dormant state that is induced in an organism during periods of environmental stress may be caused by a number of variables. Those of major importance in contributing to the onset of dormancy include changes in temperature and photoperiod and the availability of food, water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. In general, because organisms normally exist within a relatively narrow temperature range, temperatures above or below the limits of this range can induce dormancy in certain organisms. Temperature changes also affect such other environmental parameters as the availability of food, water, and oxygen, thus providing further stimuli for dormancy. In Arctic regions, for example, certain animals become dormant during the winter months, when food is less abundant. In desert biomes, on the other hand, the summer months, which may be periods of reduced food availability, intense heat, or extreme aridity, stimulate some desert organisms to become dormant. The lack of water during summer periods of drought or winter periods of freezing, as well as annual changes in the duration and intensity of light, particularly at high latitudes, are other environmental factors that can induce dormant states.
Under natural conditions, most of the environmental variables that influence dormancy are interrelated in a cyclical pattern that is either circadian or annual. Fluctuations in the major daily variables—light and temperature—can induce rhythmical changes in the metabolic activity of an organism; annual fluctuations in temperature and photoperiod can influence the availability of food and water. Concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide normally do not vary on a cyclical basis but as a result of habitat selection, such as burrowing in the mud, seeking a den, or other similar activities, in which the metabolic responses of the organism can alter the oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations in its environment.
In an attempt to determine the relative influence of environmental factors upon dormancy, they have been varied experimentally. Investigations indicate that an organism, after it has adapted to a sequence of cyclical rhythms, tends to maintain its adaptive behaviour even though the environmental stimulus that originally elicited such behaviour is no longer present. For example, the Arctic ground squirrel (whose winter period of dormancy is referred to as hibernation), when taken into the laboratory, supplied with adequate amounts of food and water, and exposed to constant temperature and light, exhibits periodic torpor (extreme sluggishness)—an innate behavioral pattern that operates independently of environmental cues. Other animals frequently will continue to respond as if they were exposed to the cyclical changes of their home environments after they are removed from their natural habitats.
Dormancy in protozoans and invertebrates
Cysts and cystlike structures
Protozoans
Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.
Subscribe
Many parasitic and free-living protozoans (one-celled animals) exhibit a dormant stage by secreting a protective cyst. The stimulus for cyst formation in free-living protozoans may be temperature changes, pollution, or lack of food or water. Euglena, a protozoan that encysts to avoid environmental extremes, has two kinds of cysts. Apparently one is formed only to avoid stressful conditions; the other is formed for the same reason but also involves asexual reproduction, resulting in a cyst that may contain up to 32 daughter organisms, which emerge under proper environmental conditions.
Free-living protozoans form cysts around themselves and avoid environmental extremes, but cysts are a part of the life cycle of parasitic protozoans. The causative agent of amebic dysentery, Entamoeba histolytica, is found in the intestine of infected individuals, in whom it forms cysts that pass to the outside in feces. When food or water containing cysts enters the digestive tract of another person, the amoebas are released from the cysts and infect the new host. Without encystment, which allows the organism to live in a dormant state in an unfavourable environment (e.g., water), amebic dysentery could be much more easily controlled. Protected by the cyst wall, however, the dormant contents of the cyst can survive for weeks. Although they are not particularly resistant to drying, the cysts of E. histolytica can withstand temperatures of up to 68 °C (154 °F) for five minutes. They are also resistant to certain chemicals.
Invertebrates
Dormant cysts are formed during the life cycles of invertebrate parasites such as the oriental liver fluke (Clonorchis sinensis). The cyst stage of this organism develops in fish muscle; if the fish is eaten raw or undercooked, the encysted fluke is transferred to a new host. The encysted stage of the trichina worm (Trichinella spiralis), which causes trichinosis, is found in the muscle cells of hogs; it is also an invertebrate parasite in which the dormant stage is an essential part of the life cycle. When undercooked pork is eaten, the cyst wall is dissolved by digestive juices, and the worm is able to make its way into the tissues of a new host.
The cystlike forms found in many other invertebrate groups are all dormant stages that preserve the species during times of environmental stress. All freshwater sponges and some marine species survive cold or drought by forming gemmules within the body of the adult sponge. These structures, which are surrounded by a resistant covering, are released when the sponge dies and disintegrates. When conditions are appropriate, the cell mass escapes from the covering and forms a new sponge.
Rotifers are microscopic aquatic animals that produce winter eggs with thick and resistant coverings similar to protozoan cysts; the eggs may remain dormant for long periods. They can survive drought or freezing and may be dispersed by wind or carried by animals. Thus, the cyst serves not only for survival of the egg under adverse conditions but also for dispersal. Some freshwater bryozoans develop disklike buds, or statoblasts, that are surrounded by a hard, chitinous (horny) shell. These statoblasts are the dormant structures that survive when the bryozoan dies in the fall or during a drought; they form a new bryozoan colony when favourable environmental conditions again prevail.
Among mollusks, land snails remain largely dormant throughout the day, with the soft head and foot withdrawn into the shell. During periods of drought or cold, they retreat into their shells and secrete a membrane (the epiphragm) of mucus and lime that covers the opening of the shell and resists desiccation. Slugs, on the other hand, bore into the ground and secrete a mucus mantle around themselves for protection during periods of unfavourable environmental conditions. Among the arthropods, many freshwater forms develop dormant cystlike stages that resist desiccation and allow the species to survive unfavourable periods.
Diapause in insects
Many insects undergo periods of reduced metabolic activity called diapause. Diapause, which may occur during any stage of the life cycle—egg, nymph, larva, pupa, or adult—is usually characterized by a cessation of growth in the immature stages and a cessation of sexual activity in adults. In some insects, it is a reaction to unfavourable environmental conditions; in others, such as certain moths and butterflies, diapause is a necessary stage of the life cycle. The 17-year larval and pupal periods of the cicada are examples of diapause. This form of dormancy is particularly common among insects that live in arid desert areas, where during the dry and hot summers, the insects usually hide themselves in the soil at suitable depths or under any available protective objects.
Insects may overwinter as egg, larva, nymph, pupa, or adult; because they can stand very low temperatures, few of these forms die if the winter temperatures are within their normal range. Even rather fragile forms, such as mosquitoes and butterflies, survive in sheltered, relatively dry places out of doors. Some butterflies even survive the winter in low shrubbery, where they may be completely covered by snow and ice for three or four months. Other insects prepare for winter by constructing nests or cocoons; still others seek suitable hiding places.
Among some insect species, diapause lasts only until favourable environmental conditions return, after which the insect resumes its normal activities. In other species, favourable environmental conditions alone do not break the diapause; some other stimulus, such as cold or food, is necessary. The eggs of the mosquito Aedes vexans, for example, remain in diapause until the damp soil on which the eggs are laid is flooded to form a pool suitable for the larvae. The eggs of another mosquito, Aedes canadensis, are laid in the same soil as those of Aedes vexans, but they will not hatch until they have been subjected to cold. Thus, when both species lay their eggs together in early summer, those of Aedes vexans hatch in pools formed by late summer rains, but those of Aedes canadensis overwinter and hatch in the spring rain pools. Not only are certain conditions required to break diapause but in some species (e.g., certain cutworms) a specific length of time must elapse before the stimuli are effective.
The onset of diapause depends upon a combination of environmental factors operating on the regulatory mechanisms—i.e., nervous and endocrine systems—of the insect. Photoperiod and temperature influence the endocrine function of the brain, which synthesizes and secretes a substance (hormone) that controls other endocrine organs, specifically the prothoracic glands. Under the stimulation of the brain hormone, the prothoracic glands secrete a hormone called ecdysone. When stimulation by the brain hormone ceases, ecdysone is no longer secreted, and, in its absence, all insect growth and metamorphosis are halted. Thus, provision is made for the overwintering of immature insects in a state of developmental standstill. With the arrival of more favourable conditions, ecdysone is again secreted, and development resumes. Because many insect species have more than one generation of progeny per year, the prothoracic glands do not cease functioning except at some stage in the life cycle of the brood that must overwinter.
