

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


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.


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.

Dormancy in cold-blooded vertebrates

African lungfish [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]African lungfishEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Two kinds of dormancy can be distinguished in vertebrates on the basis of body temperature. Most vertebrates are poikilothermous, or cold-blooded, because the body temperature follows that of the environment and is not kept constant by internal (homoiostatic) mechanisms. The second group, the homoiotherms, maintain a constant body temperature regardless of the ambient temperature; these warm-blooded animals include birds and mammals.

Fishes and amphibians

The metabolism of poikilothermous animals is most influenced by the environmental variables of temperature, nutrition, and photoperiod. Photoperiod, the daily length of light exposure, has a marked metabolic effect in both fishes and amphibians; fishes, however, remain active throughout the year, although the activity may be limited by temperature, as in those fish that rest on the bottom or in mud during cold periods. Brief superficial freezing and supercooling (without freezing) to temperatures below the freezing point of body fluids are experienced by resistant species, but it has not been established that fishes that have been frozen solid can become active when thawed. In the Arctic, no fishes are found in lakes that freeze solid in the winter. Because most fishes do maintain some kind of activity year round, they cannot be said to become dormant in the sense in which the word is used in this article.

In addition to light and temperature, another environmental stress imposed upon fish is drought. Lungfishes, as represented by the African lungfish (Protopterus), burrow deeply into the mud when their water supply is diminished. They surround themselves with a cocoon of slime and remain inactive. Their gills are nonfunctional during this period of dormancy, and they use a lunglike air bladder for respiratory purposes. They rely on fat reserves as an energy source, and in order to conserve water, they excrete urea rather than ammonia. This is because ammonia as an excretory product is highly toxic; animals that excrete ammonia require large quantities of water to dilute it below toxic levels. Urea is a semi-solid substance of low solubility, and requires little or no water for its excretion. (Desert animals and many insects excrete urea.)

During periods of drought or cold, amphibians seek protective niches in which to remain dormant until the return of favourable environmental conditions. Overwintering of frogs and salamanders frequently involves their aggregation in large numbers in a moist terrestrial niche, such as a rotting log, the mud on banks or bottoms of marshes and ponds, or in springs. The more terrestrially oriented amphibians, such as toads, may pass the winter in solitary burrows on land. During dry seasons, frogs may be dormant in a mud cocoon.


Effects of temperature

Because reptiles depend on external sources of heat to keep warm, they survive during periods of low temperature by seeking a place where the temperature will not fall below freezing, except temporarily. The commonest niche for reptilian dormancy is almost always found underground at a depth dependent on the thermal conductivity of the soil relative to the minimum temperature reached. This factor alone can control the distribution of reptiles. None can survive in the Arctic or Antarctic in places in which the subsoil is permanently frozen; and relatively few can exist in areas near these regions, even if suitable sites for dormancy were available, because the short summers would prevent the completion of life cycles. Although the distribution of snakes at high latitudes or altitudes is limited, the adder has been found at 3,300 metres (10,000 feet) in the Swiss Alps and as far north as the Arctic Circle. The Himalayan pit viper has been found at an altitude of 5,000 metres (16,000 feet).

Winter dormancy in reptiles, which is also called brumation, is akin to hibernation in mammals. Instead of experiencing long, sustained periods of inactivity, brumating reptiles stir occasionally to drink water; however, they may go without food for several months. Dormancy in reptiles may display a circadian rhythm, a seasonal one, or both; it is a state of torpor directly induced by low temperature. When the adder, for example, experiences temperatures of about 8–10 °C (46–50 °F), it begins to search out suitable niches in which to rest. Its dormancy ends on the first sunny days after the maximum temperature has reached 7.5 °C (45.5 °F). Because these conditions vary, the adder’s period of dormancy extends from 275 days in northern Europe to 105 days in southern Europe and is about two weeks in the United Kingdom, where the Gulf Stream provides warmth.

Reptiles also normally become dormant during the hottest parts of summer, but the physiology of summer dormancy is quite different from that of winter. As already mentioned, winter dormancy is a state of torpor, induced by a low temperature, that becomes more pronounced as the temperature falls. There is, however, a wide range between the animal’s normal, active (coenothermic) temperature and the lowest temperature at which it can exist. At high temperatures, on the other hand, there is a much narrower range between the coenothermic temperature and temperatures that cause death. In other words, reptiles can tolerate colder temperatures much better than they can tolerate higher ones. For this reason, during hot weather they must seek refuge underground or in cool, shady places, where they remain physiologically active but must forego all normal activity because of the restricted nature of the cooler niche. Desert reptiles, in particular, exhibit such temperature responses daily.

During its dormancy, the amount of water needed by a reptile is less than at other times and is normally supplied by water produced from the metabolism of the animal’s own stored food reserves, particularly fat. In areas in which alternating wet and dry seasons occur, reptiles maintain a longer period of dormancy during the dry season. This behaviour may be related more to the lack of available water than to temperature, because in such areas the onset of the seasonal monsoons elicits a period of increased reptile activity.

Because there is only a limited number of suitable sites available for dormancy, several snakes, usually of the same species, may be found in each niche. As many as 100 or more snakes have been taken from one winter den. Occasionally, lizards and toads may also be found in the same den, but stories of snakes that share denning sites with small birds and mammals have been difficult to substantiate. It is much more usual to find that the entry of snakes into the burrow of a prairie dog or some other warm-blooded animal is followed by the evacuation of the original occupant.


Effects of latitude

Changes in latitude not only alter the lengths of the dormant and active periods of reptiles but also affect their circadian rhythms because of the changes in the proportions of night to day. Many species of snakes, including the adder, are normally active in the early evening. In the northerly latitudes (e.g., northern Europe, such as Scandinavia and Finland), where the length of the active season is reduced by as much as two-thirds, these snakes are active throughout the day and are able to take advantage of every warm hour in order to complete the necessary portions of their life cycle. Even this increased activity during the shorter summer season, however, does not compensate for the latitude. Growth and development slow to such a point that sexual maturity is delayed, and the reproductive period requires two years rather than one; young are produced only every other year instead of every year, as at lower latitudes.

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