What are the strengths and weaknesses of homeostasis?

Answer 1

Homeostasis is a property of a system that regulates the its internal environment to maintain a stable, steady-state condition.

Homeostatic regulation allows endotherms (e.g, humans) to maintain conditions such as body temperature at a constant level over a wide range of surroundings. Ectotherms (e.g., snakes), on the other hand, exhibit a wide range of variations due to environmental changes.

The advantage of homeostatic regulation is that it allows organisms to function effectively in a broad range of environmental conditions. Lacking this property, ectotherms, for example, become sluggish at low temperatures.

The disadvantage of homeostasis is the energy costs and resources required to run such an auto-regulatory system. Snakes can eat only once a week, but humans need continuous sleep, energy intake, and waste expulsion to keep the cellular processes running.

Such an integrated control system is also under risk of homeostatic imbalance caused by aging or disease, in which case the organism would be impaired internally and unconditioned to adaptively respond to environmental changes.