This chapter discusses the modern ecological and evolutionary contexts of the evolutionary physiology in insects and provides a survey of sources of environmental variability and their effects on insect populations. The chapter explores environmental variation and the various ways in which it may be quantified. Some environmental variables are relatively simple and straightforward, both to measure and to control, whereas others pose substantially greater problems from both perspectives. Even variables that are seemingly easy to measure might act in ways that are difficult to identify. The chapter examines insect responses to the thermal environment over a variety of spatial and temporal scales, focusing on recent developments in the field. The importance of water availability for insect survival and the determination of distribution and abundance patterns have been widely demonstrated. The chapter considers the question of what lessons insect evolutionary physiologists might have to offer ecology and conservation biology. In particular, how evolutionary physiology can offer ecologists a set of useful general rules in some cases and can unveil the nature of local contingency in others.

Physiological Diversity in Insects: Ecological and Evolutionary Contexts