Once the definition of "behavior" expands to include such things as a shift in the trajectory of a root, a reallocation of resources, or the emission of a powerful chemical, plants begin to look like much more active agents, responding to environmental cues in ways more subtle or adaptive than the word "instinct" would suggest.
A study in press from the Swiss Eosinophilic Esophagitis Group will contribute greatly to resolving this problem, but, at this point, many physicians do not appreciate the subtle and adaptive behaviors that EoE patients adopt to cope with their disease and which can lead to inaccurate assessment of symptoms.
Since our cooling paradigm can be used to titrate UPR activation, it represents a simple method to address subtle but important effects dictating adaptive versus maladaptive outcomes of this cascade in any cell type.
Although there are some elegant genetic experiments illustrating the subfunctionalization process (van Hoof 2005), they do not discount the possibility that subfunctionalization itself could have been adaptive, perhaps in subtle ways.
As an investigative strategy, however, the assumption of function and purpose is useful, because it can help one to discover adaptive features that are subtle or complex or for some other reason easy to overlook.
Subtle, heterogeneous, potentially reversible, cytopathic and adaptive cellular events (metabolic changes, mitochondrial dysfunction, autophagy, cell cycle arrest, etc).
Its perfection at play -- an adaptive behavior that has subtle but deep roots in low self-worth.
However, since these effects are often very subtle and the intestinal system has a highly adaptive and extensive reserve capacity [ 14], it is still questionable whether these changes play a role in aging-related malnutrition.
The relationship is, however, clearly more subtle than this because empirical evidence also supports extensive adaptive variation in the presence of gene flow e.g. [ 12- 15] highlighting the role of local selection gradients across different environments.
In fact, there is a subtle, but important difference between the roles suggested for the adaptive scaling of reward and novelty.
