Biodiversity🦜 Flashcards
What are the five kingdoms
Fungi, animalia, protoctista, prokaryotae, plantae
Features of animalia🐯
Multicellular
No cell walls
Heterotrophic
Nervous system
What does heterotrophic mean?🐯
Obtaining nutrition from ingesting other organisms
Features of plantae🌱
Multicellular
Autotrophic
Cellulose cell wall
Chloroplasts
What does autotrophic mean?🌱
Produce own food
Obtain nutrition through photosynthesis
Features of fungi🍄
Chitin cell wall
Saprotrophic
What does saprotrophic mean?🍄
Obtain nutrition by secreting enzymes onto external food source and then absorb digestive products
Features of protoctista🌊
Multicellular or unicellular or filaments
Not cellulose cell walls
Heterotrophic or autotrophic
Features of prokaryotae🔍
Unicellular
Peptidoglycan/murein cell wall
Saprophytic or autotrophic
What does saprophytic mean?🔍
Obtains nutrition from dead or decaying organisms
Who was Linnaeus?
He created the taxonomy and the classification system according to shared physical characteristics
What is the hierarchical classification system?
Large groups are divided into progressively smaller groups
What is the order of the hierarchical classification system?
Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species
Features of a species
Similar characteristics
Interbreed to produce fertile offspring
Rules of the binomial naming system
Genus has a capital letter and is first
Species is lowercase and is second
Either written in italics or underlined
Scientific name should be written out full first time but can be shortened later
If the species is unknown then ‘sp’ can be written
What is the three domain system?
System for classifying biological organisms
Tree diagram
Bacteria, archaea, eukarya
What are extremophiles?🌋
Organisms which live in extreme environments
High temperatures, high concentration of salt in water, high pressures, extreme pH
What are hyperthermophiles?🌋
Thrive in hot environments
Aquifex genus of bacteria
What is a thermococcus microbe?🌋
Lives in hydrothermal vents
Can survive on little energy
What is the pentadactyl limb?
Used by many animals for different functions
Series of bones that consist of ball and socket joints in your elbow and shoulder
Common throughout - evolved for different needs and provides evidence for common ancestry
What is the phylogenetic tree?
Shows how organisms are related over evolutionary history.
The further back the limit is in time, the less related the organisms.
What were ‘Darwin’s Finches’?
Darwin believes that originally one species of finch came to the Galápagos Islands and it adapted to have characteristics suited to particular food sources - adaptive radiation
What is a homologous structure?
It has a similar underlying structure but a different form. This is because adaptations have developed through natural selection to give different functions.
What is a analogous structure?
When organisms appear similar but have a different underlying structure.
What is convergent evolution?
When organisms have the same solution to their environment but different starting points.
Adaptations of desert animals
- Can survive for a long time without food or water
- can drink lots of water in one session
- places for storing fat
Arctic animal adaptations
Wide feet Sharp claws and teeth Small ears Good swimmers Blubber Fur
Biodiversity
Number of species and the number of individuals within each species in a given environment.
Varies across the planet and over time.
Highways in tropical rainforests and coral reefs.
Increases from the poles towards the equator.
Why do tropical rainforests have the most abundant biodiversity?
Can support many organisms: High rainfall. Close to the equator so has lots of light and warmth. Many different habitats. High temperatures. Many different food sources. Good conditions for photosynthesis.
Biodiversity threats
Major events such as the asteroid impact 65 million years ago; there have been 5 events in the past 540 million years.
Human activities.
What is adaptive radiation?🐦
A process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges, or opens new environmental niches.
What is natural selection?🐦
- Overproduction of offspring
- Constancy of number
- Struggle for existence
- Variation among offspring
- Survival of the fittest
- Offspring resemble their parents
- Formation of new species
Examples of evolved structure characteristics
Large or small ears
Large or small paws
Examples of evolved behavioural characteristics
Hibernation
Migration
Examples of evolved physiological characteristics
Urine concentration and kidney structure
Evidence for common ancestry
Look for similarities in:
Overall appearance
Underlying structure
Biochemical compounds
Why is looking at biochemical compounds potentially more accurate to analyse?
It reduces mistakes in classification due to convergent evolution and analogous structures.
It shows the proportion of alleles or proteins shared by a certain species - RNA and DNA.
Electrophoresis can be used to identify shared molecules
What is electrophoresis?
It identifies shared molecules.
DNA is made into fragments using enzymes, then put into a gel to see how far they travel - the shorter fragments travel further.
Overproduction of offspring🐦
All organisms reproduce to give far more offspring than are needed to replace the parents
Constancy of number🐦
Populations of organisms fluctuate, but numbers remain fairly constant
Struggle for existence🐦
This was concluded from the previous two observations.
Some individuals will not survive long enough to reproduce
Variation among offspring🐦
Any offspring produced sexually show individual variations
Survival of the fittest🐦
Those individuals best adapted to their environment will be more likely to survive in the struggle for existence
Offspring resemble their parents🐦
Those individuals that survive to reproduce are likely to produce offspring that are similar to themselves - favourable adaptations are transmitted from one generation to the next
Formation of new species🐦
Over successive generations, the characteristics of a population will slowly change. Those individuals that lack favourable characteristics will be less likely to survive and reproduce and so their numbers will decline. Those individuals that exhibit favourable characteristics will survive and reproduce, increasing their numbers.
What is generally accepted by biologists?
All organisms have evolved from a common ancestor via adaptive radiation.
What does bottleneck mean?
The drastic reduction in the numbers of an organism in the loss of genetic diversity of the population
What is genetic diversity of a species?
The number of different alleles present within the gene pool of a species
What are polymorphic genes?
They have more than one allele at each gene locus
What is polymorphism?
Word used to describe the presence of several different forms or types of individuals among the members of a single species
What is mostly used to compare organisms relatedness?
DNA (base sequence)
RNA
