Fig. 1.

Diapause. Regulatory processes triggered by external and internal signals occur in many organisms capable of undergoing diapause, a physiological process characterized by overlapping stages. All diapause organisms exhibit one or more properties, in varying degrees of intensity, which enable survival upon exposure to harsh environments and permit the mixing of genes from temporally separated populations. This review demonstrates underlying similarities between diapauses in organisms that may otherwise appear unrelated and that diapause in different organism is often characterized by shared properties expressed in varying intensities