This paper describes existing work related to the development of adaptive systems and approaches in ubiquitous and pervasive environments and sheds more light on how features from natural and biological systems could be exploited for engineering adaptive systems. Ubiquitous and pervasive systems are composed of different heterogeneous parts or entities that interact and perform actions favoring the emergence of global desired behavior. Furthermore, in this type of systems entities might join or

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... leave without disturbing the collective, and the system should self-organize and continue performing their goals. Therefore, entities must self-evolve and self-improve by learning from their interactions with the environment. In this paper, the main challenges for engineering these systems are presented by putting more emphasis on the design and the development of distributed and adaptive algorithms that allow system entities to select the best suitable strategy/action in order to drive the system to the best suitable behavior according to the current state of the system and environment changes. We also highlight specific aspects being investigated via illustrative examples in order to show the usefulness of natural and biological system principles for developing adaptive approaches.