THEBARTON SENIOR COLLEGE

STAGE 1 BIOLOGY A, 2005

Adaptations in Living Organisms
Adaptations are the special features of an organism that enable it to survive in its particular environment.
List some of the things that an animal must do in order to survive:

Examples of adaptations include special features of the animals body (structural adaptations), and patterns of behaviour.

Structural Adaptations
Complete the table below, describing one adaptation of each of the organisms listed and explaining why it helps the organism to survive.

ORGANISM
Monkey

ADAPTATION

ENABLES IT TO

Giraffe

Earthworm

Eagle

Duck

Cactus

The pictures below show that feet are not all the same. Each foot adapts a bird for life in its particular environment. a Decide which of the activities listed below each foot is best suited for, then write its letter in the square next to the activity. Next to each square, write a few words explaining why that foot is suitable for the activity you have selected.

Swimming Diving Running

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

Wading Grasping prey Perching on a branch

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

4 Its not only birds feet that are adapted to the birds activities. The pictures below show four different birds beaks.

Decide which of the activities listed below each beak is best suited for, then write its letter in the square next to the activity. Next to each square, write a few words explaining why that beak is suitable for the activity you have selected.

Sucking nectar from flowers

Crushing nuts and seeds

Scooping fish out of the water

Pulling worms out of the mud

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

5 Four more feet are shown in the diagrams below. Describe the adaptation of each foot. Explain why this adaptation enables the animal to live successfully in its environment.

PICTURE OF FOOT, SHOWING ADAPTATION

DESCRIPTION OF ADAPTATION

REASON WHY THE ADAPTATION IS SUCCESSFUL

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

Look at some Real Animals

WORK IN GROUPS FOR THIS ACTIVITY A variety of preserved vertebrate animals is available for you to look at. For each animal, describe or sketch the adaptations it possesses to carry out the following activities:

Move around. Obtain and eat its food Protect itself ADAPTATIONS FOR MOVEMENT FOR FEEDING FOR PROTECTION

NAME OF ANIMAL

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

Stage 1 Biology A

Adaptations in Living Organisms

Evolution and Adaptations

We have seen that all animals possess adaptations that enable them to survive in their particular environments. Because there are so many different environments on Earth, there are many different types of living organisms. All successful organisms possess special adaptations that enable them to live in their own environments. The pictures below show a possible sequence of events that led, over millions of years to giraffes with long necks. Write your interpretation of these events below each picture

These adaptations came about by the process called evolution, which is a result of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest. The fossil record provides evidence for evolution. So do isolated communities of animals and plants. Millions of years organisms The process byago which less adapted to their environment are likely to Because they . Today .. die and by which the better adapted tend to survive is called natural selection. If we survey any inherited feature in a living organism it can be seen that many features show a range of variation for example size, colour or resistance to a poison. The two photographs below show a Peppered Moth that lives in Britain.

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

Living Organisms Can Adjust to a Changing Environment

Populations of animal and plant species have been observed to change their characteristics when the environment has changed. There are variations in the colours of peppered moths, as there are in all living organisms. The adjacent pictures show two colour variations of the moths.

The photographs below show a dark coloured moth on two different trees.

On which tree would it be most likely to be captured by a predator? Since the revolution, trees in industrial parts of Britain have been darkened by soot like the one on the left. In rural areas, the trees are more likely to be light coloured like the one on the right. Make a prediction about the colour of most of the peppered moths in industrial areas.

Suggest the colour of most of the peppered moths in rural areas.

The change in appearance of the peppered moth in Britain as the environment darkened due to pollution is an example of an adaptive change.

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

10

How do These Changes Occur?

Some humans are tall, others are short. However, most people are within a certain height range which can be considered normal. This is the same for all living organisms. If we measured the length of thousands of yabbies in the River Murray, the results might appear as shown in the graph below.

Numbers of Yabbies
120 100 80 60 40 population 20 0 1 3

population

11

13

15

size in cm

About 50% of yabbies are between

and

cm long.

What is the most common (normal) length of the yabbies? _________________ If large yabbies are be more easily found and eaten by humans which part of the population would be less likely to reproduce? (Long or shorter ones.) __________________________ If size is inherited then what might happen to the normal size of yabbies in the river? ________________________________________________________________________________

If some of the very large yabbies were caught and released into a farm dam well away from the river, would the yabbies in the dam have a shorter or longer normal size?

In time the yabbies in the dam might differ greatly from the yabbies in the river. They might differ

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Adaptations in Living Organisms

11 so much that they could no longer interbreed with the yabbies from the river. They would then be considered a separate species. Isolation is needed to create new species. Isolation can be caused by geographical barriers such as lack of suitable habitat to travel through. The sea forms barriers to many land animals. That is one reason that animals in Australia are very different to animals in the rest of the world. One species can gradually evolve into several different species if the original distribution of is broken up an populations become isolated from one another. This appears to be happening at the moment with the parrots we call rosellas. At extreme ends of their distribution Rosellas are very different in size and colour. Yellow and small in inland desert regions and large and crimson in the mountains of NSW. Gaps in their range have been created through farming and clearing of trees.

Charles Darwin observed differences between finches (small birds) on the different islands of the Galapagos group. These observations led him to propose the idea of evolution through what he called Natural Selection. Basically Darwin suggested that all animals and plants vary a bit. Those animals and plants whose variations give them a better chance of survival and reproducing will become the most numerous. Over time such variation and isolation will lead to new species. All was ok until he suggested that this happened to humans as well! Even today, in some parts of the world it is forbidden to teach the idea of evolution.

Fossils have been found that are a bit like humans. Some of these are 5 million years old. The earliest remains of human like creatures were found in east Africa in what is now Ethiopia. These humans had features a bit like chimpanzees as well as humans. We consider them humans because there is evidence that they made and used tools. Chimps use simple tools but do not really make them to suit a purpose.

Stage 1 Biology A

Adaptations in Living Organisms