Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), PO Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands; Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies (CEES) of the University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands.
Trends Ecol Evol. 1997 Apr;12(4):134-8. doi: 10.1016/s0169-5347(97)01003-3.
Organ structures and correlated metabolic features (e.g. metabolic rate) have often taken as fixed attributes of fully grown individual vertebrates. When measurements of these attributes became available they were often used as representative values for the species, disregarding the specific conditions during which the mesurement were made. Evidence is accumulating that the functional size of organs and aspects of the metabolic physiology of an individual may show great flexibility over timescales of weeks and even days depending on physiological status, environmental conditions and behavioural goals. This flexibility is a way for animals to cope successfully with a much wider range of conditions occurring during various life-cycle events than fixed metabolic machinery would allow. Such phenotypic flexibility is likely to be a common adaptive syndrome, typical of vertebrates living in variable environments.
器官结构和相关代谢特征（例如代谢率）通常被视为完全成熟的脊椎动物的固有属性。当这些属性的测量值可用时，它们通常被用作代表物种的值，而忽略了进行测量时的具体条件。有证据表明，器官的功能大小和个体代谢生理学的某些方面可能会在数周甚至数天的时间内表现出很大的灵活性，具体取决于生理状态、环境条件和行为目标。这种灵活性是动物在各种生命周期事件中成功应对比固定代谢机制允许的范围更广的条件的一种方式。这种表型灵活性可能是一种常见的适应综合征，是生活在多变环境中的脊椎动物的典型特征。
