Meeting Abstract
In seasonal environments, many organisms enter a programmed state of developmental arrest in which energy use is reduced and stress hardiness up-regulated. Insect diapause and mammalian hibernation are well-studied examples of dormancy within animals. Though there is conceptual and functional overlap between these groups, there is no comprehensive framework for comparing or contrasting these processes across taxa. We present a shared framework that lays out a series of dynamic phases that animals traverse during dormancy: preparation, initiation, maintenance, potentiation, and activation. We discuss some of the functional processes that operate during each phase and the utility of the framework for investigating and understanding species responses to variable climate conditions. Finally, we use the framework to identify emerging opportunities that arise from a cross-taxa consideration of programmed dormancy. We expect that this framework will be broadly useful for addressing questions related to overwintering eco-physiology. Moreover, the framework may be used more broadly to develop more integrative, comparative thinking across other types of programmed dormancy, including plants, invertebrates, and non-mammalian vertebrates.
