There is a growing amount of empirical evidence on the important role of cell size in body size adjustment in ambient or changing conditions. Though the adaptive significance of their correspondence is well understood and demonstrated, the proximate mechanisms are still in a phase of speculation. We made interesting observations on body/cell size adjustment under stressful conditions during an experiment designed for another purpose. We found that the strength of the body/cell size match is condition-dependent. Specifically, it is stronger under more stressful conditions, and it changes depending on exposure to lower temperature vs. exposure to higher temperature. The question whether these observations are of limiting or adaptive character remains open; yet, according to our results, both versions are possible but may differ in response to stress caused by too low vs. too high temperatures. Our results suggest that testing the hypotheses on body/cell size match may be a promising study system for the recent scientific dispute on the evolutionary meaning of developmental noise as opposed to phenotypic plasticity.

中文翻译：

---

在压力条件下，一个挑剔的生物可能揭示出有关身体/细胞大小整合的哪些信息？

越来越多的经验证据表明，在环境条件或不断变化的条件下，细胞大小在人体大小调整中的重要作用。尽管已经很好地理解和证明了它们对应关系的适应性意义，但其附近的机制仍处于推测阶段。在针对其他目的设计的实验中，我们对压力条件下的身体/细胞大小调整进行了有趣的观察。我们发现身体/细胞大小匹配的强度取决于条件。具体而言，它在压力更大的条件下更强，并且取决于暴露于较低温度与暴露于较高温度下的变化。这些观察是否具有局限性或适应性的问题尚待解决；但是，根据我们的结果，两种版本都是可能的，但响应于过低或过高的温度所引起的压力可能会有所不同。我们的研究结果表明，对机体/细胞大小匹配的假设进行测试可能是一个有前途的研究系统，可以解决有关发育噪声与表型可塑性相反的最新科学争议。