Studying stress responses in the post-genomic era: its ecological and evolutionary role

Most investigations on the effects of and responses to stress exposures have been performed on a limited number of model organisms in the laboratory. Here much progress has been made in terms of identifying and describing beneficial and detrimental effects of stress, responses to stress and the mechanisms behind stress tolerance. However, to gain further understanding of which genes are involved in stress resistance and how the responses are regulated from an ecological and evolutionary perspective there is a need to combine studies on multiple levels of biological organization from DNA to phenotypes. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of studying ecologically relevant traits and natural or semi-natural conditions to verify whether the results obtained are representative of the ecological and evolutionary processes in the field. Here, we will review what we currently know about thermal adaptation and the role of different stress responses to thermal challenges in insects, particularly Drosophila. Furthermore, we address some key questions that require future attention.