Adaptation of Animals and Plants to Environment

Animals
Physiological mechanisms involved in response to environment changes: homeostatic responses and adaptations. Involved organs: skin, intestine, lung, gill, kidney, salt glands.
Osmotic and ionic homeostasis
Regulation in aquatic habitats showing different salinity: invertebrates of seawater, brackish water, freshwater and hypersaline water; aquatic vertebrates; catadromous and anadromous fishes.
Regulation in terrestrial habitats: dehydration risk and hydric balance in terrestrial invertebrates and vertebrates (Henle's loop, malpighian tubules).
Nitrogen excretion (ammonotelic, ureotelic and uricotelic organisms).
Respiration
Respiration in aquatic habitats: oxygen availability; gills and aquatic ventilation; facoltative and obligate air breathing fishes; aquatic respiration control: PO2 dependance.
Respiration in terrestrial habitats: oxygen availability; lungs and aerial ventilation in vertebrates; tracheae and respiration in insects; aerial respiration control: PCO2 dependance. Special adaptations: Ipossia induced variations and adaptations to altitude. Diving related cardiovascular and respiratory adaptations.
Thermoregulation
Body temperature: endotherms, ectotherms and heterotherms.
Endotherms: heat production and loss; physiological responses to environment temperature changes and to extreme temperatures (adaptive hypothermia in birds and mammals).
Ectotherms: preferred temperature and behavioural thermoregulation; physiological responses to extreme temperatures (cryoprotectants). Thermoregulation in Social Insects.

Plants
Assimilation of mineral nutrients. Nitrogen: nitrate and ammonium uptake and assimilation, conversion to aminoacids. Nitrate sensing and signalling: adaptation to fluctuating environments.
Programmed cell death (PCD): overview; PCD in plants and animals. PCD in plant life cycle: examples of developmental PCD (xylem formation and maturation of cereal endosperm); PCD as plant response to stress. Senescence: overview; impact of senescence on photosynthesis; environmental influences on senescence.
Interaction between plant and other organisms: symbiosis plant / Rhizobium; symbiosis plant / mycorrhizal fungi. Interactions with pathogens: genetic and molecular basis of plant-pathogen interactions; plant defense against phatogens (hypersensitive response and systemic defense)
Stress physiology: plant response to abiotic stress as drougth, ipo/anoxia, saline stress, oxidative stress, heat and cold/freezing stress, pollution.