1. The study of how organisms interact with and adapt to their physical environment, combining ecology and physiology.
Usage: scientific field; also called environmental physiology

Examples

• Ecophysiology helps scientists understand how desert plants conserve water in extreme heat.
• The researcher's work in ecophysiology examined how fish adapt to changing water temperatures.
• Ecophysiology reveals the physiological mechanisms that allow arctic animals to survive freezing conditions.
• Students in the ecology program learned about ecophysiology and its role in conservation biology.
• Ecophysiology combines field observations with laboratory experiments to study organism-environment relationships.