Adaptations Of Organisms Flashcards
What is an environment?
The environment of an organism includes both the living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) surroundings of an organism.
The environment provides an organism with its essential requirements.
What is the tolerance range?
Range of environmental conditions (eg: temperature) that an organism can survive in.
Abiotic factors are? And include?
Physical surroundings
Non-living factors
Soil, rain, temperature, salinity, humidity, water, light, shelter, gases, pH and nest sites.
Biotic factors are? And include?
Other organisms with which the organism interacts with.
Availability of mates or the impact of predators and parasites, mates, diseases.
What is a limiting factor?
A condition that limits a process, or the abundance and distribution of an organism; for example shortage of light is an environmental factor that limits photosynthesis and plant growth.
Define distribution
The geographic extent; may refer, for example, to a family, genus, species or particular population of a species.
What is an adaptation?
An adaptation is an inherited characteristic that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction of an individual organism.
Characteristics of organisms that assists its survival in its environment.
What does it mean to adapt?
To change behaviour or physiology to cope with changes on the external or internal environment. Such changes are short term and not passed on to offspring.
Structural adaptation
Structural adaptations are the physical features of an organism that help it to survive and succeed in its environment.
Behavioural adaptation
What an organism DOES to survive in it environment.
Physiological or Functional adaptation
The way in which the body operates to survive.
Abiotic factors in water include:
pH, gases, temperature, light, salinity.
What is a hydrophyte?
Is an aquatic vascular plant that has few stomata, and large intercellular air spaces to provide buoyancy and retain gases.
Pneumatophores are?
Aerial roots in mangroves that increase the surface area exposed to the air at low tide for oxygen uptake.
What is a cuticle?
A layer of non-cellular material on the outer surface of a plant or animal, impermeable to water.
What is hibernation?
In animals, a state of reduced metabolism and controlled lowering of body temperature, such as occurs in many cold-climate species in winter. Hibernation reduces the amount of energy required at a time when little food is available.
What is dessication?
Extreme dehydration.
What is sclerophyll?
Plants with hard (sclero) leaves (phyll), such as drought-resistant eucalypts and banksia. Sclerophylls dominate those plant communities which grow on infertile soils, such as heath.
What is stomata?
Tiny epidermal pores bounded by two highly specialised guard cells; they are the main route through which gas exchange occurs in plants.
What are succulents?
Having thick, fleshy, water-storing leaves or stems.
What is a xerophyte?
A plant that is adapted to arid conditions. It includes succulents (fleshy plants) and sclerophylls (hard-leaved) plants.
