What are taxis and kinesis?

Answer 1

Taxis vs KinesisKinesis is a simple change in activity, or turning rate in response to stimulus. Animals will neither move towards nor away from an environment. An example of this is wood lice, which will slow down in favorable conditions, a humid environment, and speed up in unfavorable conditions, a dry environment. This simple behavior tends to keep the wood lice in humid areas. Since they slow down in this environment, they tend to stay there.

Taxis is a more automatic response to stimuli-oriented movement towards or away from an environment. An example is how fly larvae will move away from the light (stimulus) which ensures that predators will be unable to detect them.

The main difference between the two is that in kinesis, no movement towards or away is taking place. It is simply actions that generally ensure that the animal spends more time in an environment. In contrast, taxis is a more active approach to stimuli, by which the animal is moving towards or way to reach favorable conditions.

Answer 2

Actually, taxis and kinesis are both physical responses to the environment of an organism. Taxis refers to an organism's response toward or away from some stimulus, like heat or light. Kinesis is an organism's general response to a condition, but the reaction is usually measured by its change in movement (faster or slower), not in a certain direction as in taxis. An example of kinesis might be an organism's increased activity in response to a change in humidity. The more comfortable an organism is in its environment, the slower its kinesis response.